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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



COMMON SENSE 



IN THE 



NURSERY 



BY 

MARION HARLAND 

AUTHOR OF "EVE'S DAUGHTERS," "COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD," ETC. 



•/ 






M" 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1885 




Copyright, 1885, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



TROWS 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

Introductory .. . v 

Familiar Talks with Mothers. 

Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery 3 

Baby's Bath 13 

When, Where, and How Baby should Sleep 21 

Baby's Day-nap 28 

Baby's Nurse 36 

Baby at Home in Winter 47 

Baby Abroad in Winter 57 

The Precocious Baby 65 

Photographing the Baby 75 

The Baby that Must Go to the Country 82 

The Baby that Must Stay in Town 90 

A Sabbath-twilight Talk with " Mamma " 99 

Nursery Cookery. 

How do you Feed Him ? 1 1 1 

Artificial Foods 118 

When to Feed Him 124 

Arrowroot 130 



iv Contents. 



PAGE 



The Porridge Family 134 

Preparations for Delicate Children 143 

Nursery Desserts 151 

A Menu for Bigger Babies 155 

Fruits 159 

Meats 166 

Clothing. 

Outfits 171 

Short Clothes , 173 

Mother's Half-minutes 175 

A Hint for Christmas 197 

Index 203 



INTRODUCTORY. 




VOLUME devoted exclusively to the 
interests of the youngest is in harmony 
with the times. Theoretically, human 
nature has long held that as the twig is bent the 
tree's inclined, but the point of age at which to 
begin the bending of the twig has been in dispute. 
The direction in which the weight of opinion is 
gravitating is indicated in the primary department 
of our Sunday-schools, and in the Kindergarten, 
now scarcely less important than the Public school 
and Academy for children of a larger growth. 

Most of the papers which make up the first half 
of Common Sense in the Nursery were originally 
prepared for the monthly magazine " BABYHOOD." 
They are not medical theses, but familiar talks 
and suggestions such as mothers will appreciate. 
At a glance they will be seen to be eminently 



vi Introductory. 

practical, as are the recipes and miscellany which 
follow. The purpose of this little work is to fill 
the place in the Nursery which the other volumes 
of the Common Sense series have been permitted 
to occupy in their appropriate departments of the 
household. 

The author states, for the comfort of those whose 
quiet of mind is assured only upon authority, that 
so many of these chapters as are here reprinted, 
have passed the scrutiny of competent medical au- 
thority, and have been endorsed " approved." 

Marion Harland. 



FAMILIAR TALKS WITH MOTHERS. 




MRS. GAMP IN THE NURSERY. 

HERE are mothers who cannot smile, ex- 
cept drearily, over the story of the im- 
mortal woman whose name heads this 
chapter. Immortal in her greed, her 
affectations, her glozing flatteries of those whom it 
was politic to conciliate, her gross neglect of the 
pauper patient, her arrogance and her ignorance, 
her horrible relish for the least agreeable features of 
her profession, her lying quotations and reminis- 
cences — all these are so many drops of vitriol upon 
the memory of such women as, a score of years ago, 
accounted subordination to her as a part, and often 
the least tolerable condition, of the " sacred, primal 
curse " of their sex. 

Mrs. Gamp, as we knew her then, was a matron 
of mature years or an acrid spinster of the same 
date. From the moment in which her shadow fell 
upon the porch-floor of the dwelling to which she 



4 Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery. 

had been summoned, to the glad hour when it 
kissed the front steps in withdrawing, the " much- 
ness of her personality " possessed, pervaded, and 
filled the premises. Children fled to silent corners 
at the rattle of her starched calico gown. The hus- 
band, at a ludicrous disadvantage in his own sight 
as in others' eyes during this malign moon, drank 
his coffee and carved his roast meekly opposite the 
mob-cap that presided over the family meal. For 
be it known that Mrs. Gamp would "engage" in no 
place where she was not allowed to sit at the first 
table with the host and hostess. The consequences 
of her refusal to "stay out the month " were too 
dire to be faced by the boldest aristocrat who ever 
wrote himself down a householder. If his wife 
could endure the despotism that overwhelmed her, 
he would be a craven were he to murmur that 
the fringe of the odious sovereignty brushed him 
roughly. 

The poor wife ! Bear me witness what was her 
need of pity, ye sisters whose joy that a man was 
born into the world was at that era dashed by dread 
of the grim potentate who threw the foundations of 
your world out of course ! Mrs. Gamp subordi- 
nated the wills of the rest of the family. That of 
her patient was absorbed, soaked up, and squeezed 



Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery. 5 

out into naught. Whatever her appetite craved 
when she had to eat for two was decreed to be the 
worst thing possible for one "in her condition. " 
The ten days of milk-tea, water-gruel, and butter- 
less toast — happily abolished now by physician and 
nurse — were made trebly penitential by the unwrit- 
ten laws of the autocrat in charge. Draughts, from 
whatever quarter, were protested ; the cup of cold 
water prayed for with tears was condemned as 
" present death to the mother and a colic-breeder 
for the infant." To long for a bath was unnatural, 
to talk of it heresy. Not a sun-ray was admitted 
to the valley of the shadow of birth. Shut within 
jealously-closed doors, smothered in blankets, for- 
bidden to turn herself in bed, to converse for half- 
an-hour at a time with her husband, or to caress 
her children in the hearing of the dragon who had 
swallowed up her individuality, the nominal queen 
of the home counted the weary hours of what was 
daylight beyond her chamber, the heavier ones of 
the night while the jailer lay snoring at her side, or 
at best on the other side of the room. One of Mrs. 
Gamp's wrought-iron principles was never to lose 
sight of her patient while awake, nor to be out of 
hearing when asleep. Not a letter was to be read 
by the sick woman, not a book or a newspaper was 



6 Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery. 

tolerated in the guarded precincts, for at least three 
weeks. Reading, like sunlight, was bad for the 
eyes " in her condition." If she lacked for amuse- 
ment, there was always Mrs. Gamp ready with 
gossip, tattle, and fearsome stories of her manifold 
ghoulish experiences. Mrs. Gamp prided herself 
upon her conversation. 

" Deluge the room with sunshine ! " commanded 
a physician a few weeks ago — a wise, great-hearted 
man — standing beside a newly-made mother. " If 
it hurts her eyes, turn the bed so that it will not 
strike directly upon them. But have plenty of light. 
Make a fire in the chimney, ventilate the room well 
every day, and never let the thermometer rise above 
sixty-eight, keeping the temperature even all day 
long. Build up her strength by digestible, nutri- 
tious food ; keep her cheerful by pleasant chat, 
books and papers. Bear in mind that she is not /// 
— only weak and tired ; a subject for Nature's cure, 
not mine." 

Set this picture over against the sketch I have 
drawn above, and be thankful, O young matron ! 
that you have come into your kingdom of maternity 
in 1885 instead of 1858 ! 

The mother might be dumb and patient. Baby, 
a born and unschooled rebel, was vociferous in pro- 



Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery. y 

test against his share of the torture decreed by 
monthly nurse and winked at by the licensed prac- 
titioner. Mrs. Gamp was equal to the situation 
here also. Proceeding upon the postulate that '' all 
babies were born contrary," she took the new speci- 
men in hand — and a strong hand — promptly. She 
dosed him as soon he was born with sweet-oil made 
thick with sugar ; swathed the yielding abdomen 
and ribs in bands of linen and flannel pinned as 
tightly as her sinewy fingers could draw them ; filled 
him up to the lips with milk-and-water ; jolted him 
to settle it until he hiccoughed convulsively ; then 
poured down catnip-tea and aniseed-cordial to cure 
the colic, Dewees' Mixture and Winslow's Soothing- 
Syrup to coax back the sleep she had driven afar. 
M Her babies " always yelled lustily and loudly, but 
it was good for their lungs. They rejected three- 
fourths of the food thrust upon them, but that was 
a sign of a healthy child. She had " no opinion of 
children who kept all they got." When she w r anted 
a " real good night's rest " she took the infant to 
her own bed, to keep it warm and drowsy ; and if 
the slumbers of the two were prolonged, the mother, 
forbidden to move or call, counted the clock-ticks 
with anguished senses, in the misgiving lest the 
then not very uncommon tragedy of an overlaid 



8 Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery. 

baby might be made manifest with the coming of 
the day. 

Mrs. Gamp not only ruled, she ramped and rioted 
over her serfs. A mother who had been settled for 
the night at nine o'clock with gruel and growls by her 
nurse, lay in her darkened chamber, her ears pierced 
by the screams of the baby in the adjoining nurs- 
ery. Summoning an older child, she sent her to 
reconnoitre and learned that the nurse was sitting 
in a rocking-chair under a flaming gas-burner read- 
ing a novel, the child crying upon her lap. The 
mother offered through the messenger a timid sug- 
gestion : Her babies always slept well in a dark 
room ; would not Mrs. Gamp lay this one in the 
cradle and turn down the light ? The answer came 
back, crisp and biting as a ginger-snap : 

" Tell her it's bad enough to be obliged to sit in 
the room with a squalling brat without doing it in 
the dark ! " 

Let this authentic anecdote suffice as a farewell 
illustration of the mother's gall-moon in the good 
old times. 

With the abruptness of violent reaction the 
Trained Nurse came to the relief of the downtrod- 
den — the relief of refined tyranny. With some 
honorable exceptions, the work done by her is 



Mrs. Gamp in the Ntirsery. g 

wholly perfunctory. The discipline of the sick- 
room and nursery is perfect. Of both there is but 
one lord, the family physician, and the Trained 
Nurse is his exponent. Domestic regulations are 
supplanted by martial law. Mother and child are 
set down in the professional note-book as " Nos. 
104 and 105." The machinery of the twenty-four 
hours comprehends cleanliness, quiet, order, weights 
and measures of nourishment, examinations of pulse, 
temperature, and other conditions. She adminis- 
ters food and, when prescribed, medicine with the 
same emotions and air, and, come what may of 
rapture or anguish, life or death, never forgets her 
role. The mother knows herself to be in the cus- 
todian's sight a piece of jarred mechanism that must 
be readjusted into working order, and endures the 
consciousness better than the thought that her baby 
is but a smaller instrument just out of the factory, 
to be tested, proved, and carried by the expert for 
a given number of weeks before it is warranted to 
run evenly. 

The expert's prices are like her professional tone 
— high. She throws no sentiment in gratis. 

Those who had the privilege of hearing Everett's 
oration on " Washington " well remember the 
burst of applause that interrupted the sentence fol- 



io Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery. 

lowing his description of Blenheim and Marlbor- 
ough's cupidity. " On the banks of the Potomac," 
began the silver voice, and the imaginations of the 
auditors anticipated the grateful contrast. 

Comparing the lesser with the greater, I like to 
believe that the thoughts of each reader will antici- 
pate the life-sketch that does meagre justice to the 
original : 

I know a nurse — and my judgment of my kind is 
gentler for .the acquaintanceship — whose presence 
in the sick-room is more beneficent than the sun- 
shine she admits freely, the air she invites to enter 
and purify. 

" Now I have sweetened your room ! " she says, 
withdrawing the screen that has kept off draughts 
from the bed. 

The mother laughs softly in the rosy face, her 
eyes shining through happy mists. 

" You have been doing that ever since you came 
into it." 

Official (and acknowledged) examinations are, in 
our nurse's judgment, startling to a nervous sub- 
ject. Feminine tact comes to the aid of experience 
when such are needed. Her trained eye does most 
of the tongue's work. A glance at the face tells 
her more than five minutes' cross-examination would 



Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery. n 

elicit from the perfunctory attendant. She tests 
pulse and temperature while bathing the patient, 
arranging the coverings, and rubbing the tired 
limbs, and invents pretty little surprises for appe- 
tite and thought. The invalid and her baby rest 
under her brooding care with equal delight. It is 
a study to note her manipulation of the sensitive 
little being. Professional deftness is blended with 
involuntary caressing, gentle pats and touches and 
strokings that are purely womanly and altogether 
beautiful. Above-stairs her presence is a benison ; 
the well-founded prejudice of the kitchen-cabinet 
against her order dissolves before her cheery help- 
fulness, the hearty " Oh ! never mind me " that 
answers questions as to what arrangements shall be 
made for her personal accommodation. She can 
sleep, eat, live anywhere so long as her charges are 
comfortable. They fill the foreground for her until 
the day comes when, amid the lamentations of the 
household, she wipes her own eyes before kissing 
her happy, good baby "good-bye." Most of her 
babies are good, and she settles them into " regular 
habits M before leaving them. 

14 It's bad luck to cry over a baby," she brings 
forth from her endless store of proverbial philos- 
ophy. " Always smile when they are looking at 



i 2 Mrs. Gamp in the Nursery. 

you. And why shouldn't you ? It's a nice world 
they've come into, if people will but take it that 
way." 

We offer the aphorism as a counter-statement to 
Mrs. Gamp's " Piljian's Projiss of a mortal wale o' 
grief." 



BABY'S BATH — WHEN AND HOW TO 
GIVE IT. 




HE suggestion of the topic brings the 
grateful reflection that the torture of the 
cold bath is abolished in nurseries where 
common sense and humanity hold sway. 
When my first baby was born, twenty-seven 
years ago, the rage for the cold plunge-bath was at 
its height. Having known for myself the discom- 
fort of such an immersion and the torture of the 
cold shower-bath, inflicted with conscientious 
regularity by one of the most tender-hearted of 
mothers, I resolved that my boy should never suffer 
either. I bathed him myself, and, under the play- 
ful pretext of nervousness in performing under the 
eyes of others a task to which I was not accustomed, 
I used to lock myself up with him in our nursery 
while washing and dressing him. My conscience 
flinches slightly to this day in the recollection of a 
deception practised upon an exemplary matron who 
one day asked me how my baby " liked the cold 



14 Baby's Bath. 

dip every morning." I answered that he had 
"never objected to it." I had not the moral cour- 
age to avow that I washed him in tepid water. 

Times have changed, and nursery-fashions with 
them. Let us be thankful — and progressive. 

Every little child that is strong and well should 
be washed from head to foot at least once every 
day. An infant in arms is more comfortable for a 
good washing at morning and another at night. No 
bath should be given within less than two hours 
after a hearty meal. If Baby awakes hungry after 
a long sleep, and insists on having his breakfast at 
bath-time, postpone the latter for an hour, and feed 
him with just enough to take the edge off his appe- 
tite and keep him from crying while the operation 
is going on. A fit of screaming during the prog- 
ress of the bath is unfortunate, exhausting the 
child and working the mother or nurse into a ner- 
vous state that tends to make her hurry over the 
business of washing and dressing. If the child is 
of a very tender age, the danger that in his writhing 
and shrieking he may rupture himself — if less im- 
minent than the inexperienced guardian is apt 
to suppose — is yet a possible one. For his sake 
and mamma's he should enter the water at peace in 
body and in temper. 



Baby's Bath. 15 

Before beginning to disrobe him, have everything 
ready that will be needed in bath and toilet. Lay 
towels, soap, clean clothes, pin-cushion, baby- 
basket full-furnished, convenient to your hand. 
Turn back your sleeves from your wrists, fastening 
them in position with stout elastic bands kept for 
the purpose. See that there are no projecting pins 
about your dress that may tear the tender flesh. 
Tie around your waist a soft flannel apron that has 
been washed several times. A half-worn flannel 
skirt, cut open at the back and hemmed down the 
sides, is excellent for this use. It must be wide 
and deep enough to enfold the child entirely. The 
tub should be perfectly clean and not more than 
half full. Baby soon learns to flourish his naked 
limbs in the water, to splash and beat with hands 
and heels to his and your delectation. The exer- 
cise is good for the growing child, and can hardly 
be indulged freely if the water rises so near the 
brim as to dash over upon the carpet. 

If you have not one of the newly-invented fold- 
ing-frames for setting a bath-tub upon, yet in some 
way spare your spine the strain and your head the 
pressure of blood that maybe caused by stooping 
to the level of the low tub. You may improvise a 
support in a broad-seated, backless chair, a bench, 



1 6 Baby f s Bath. 

or you may take a deal table made expressly for 
this purpose, or an old one brought from the lum- 
ber-room with its legs sawed down to a convenient 
length. Set the support, with the tub on it, upon an 
old rug or square of oil-cloth spread to protect the 
carpet, and fill the tub, as has been said, half-way to 
the top with water before stripping the baby. Un- 
dress him rapidly, talking cheerfully and soothingly 
to him to allay impatience, should he delight in the 
prospective process — to quiet nervousness if he 
dreads it. 

Before he is ready, be sure you have ascertained 
the temperature of the water. Your. own sense of 
feeling must not be taken as an infallible test of the 
bath. I have seen mothers, rejecting the evidence 
of the semi-hardened hands, bare their arms and 
hold them in the water, rightly judging that flesh 
which is kept habitually covered is more sensitive 
than that which is usually exposed to the air. 
Baby's cuticle is far more delicate than mamma's. 
The safe witness is the mercury bulb and tube. 
When the mercury stands for thirty seconds at 
ninety degrees, nearly ten below blood-heat, you 
may safely submerge the child. He will not wince 
then from too much heat or catch his breath at the 
shock of a cold plunge. Slide him in gently, even 



Baby r s Bath. 1 7 

when the water is just right. Avoid shocking his 
nerves whenever you can. He ought to love his 
bath, and, if well managed, in time he must. 

A washcloth is preferable to a sponge for cleans- 
ing a very young child. The first operation of the 
bath, in the writer's opinion (many mothers leave 
it to the end), is to wind a fold of an old linen-cam- 
bric handkerchief about the forefinger, and, after 
dipping it in a cup of pure tepid water, to wash out 
the mouth, including the tongue, gums, and roof. 
Wash the face, eyes, and nostrils before putting 
soap into the bath. 

For nursery use, old castile soap outranks in real 
value the scented cakes warranted absolutely pure, 
healthful, and slightly medicinal. Buy it in quan- 
tity, saw it into pieces an inch thick, and let it ripen 
for months on your closet-shelves. In applying it, 
rub the wet cloth upon it. Beginning at baby's 
head, wash this tenderly but thoroughly, taking 
care, of course, that the ends do not drip into his 
eyes. Hold a dry handkerchief to his forehead 
with your left hand to absorb the stray streams. 
Do not blind him with handkerchief or washcloth, 
if you would have him maintain his equanimity. 
Wash the soap entirely out of his hair, or from his 
scalp if he is bald, and dry his head before leaving 



1 8 Baby's Bath. 

it. Use the like precaution with other parts of the 
body. Alkalies — even old castile — prove irritating 
if left to dry upon the skin. Much of the distressing 
chafing under the joints, and where the skin lies in 
folds, which is pronounced mysterious by nurses, 
is the direct consequence of neglect of this simple 
rule. The specific object of the bath is to free the 
pores. The alkaline soap has an affinity for the 
fatty parts of the cutaneous secretion, attracts them 
to itself, and ought to be washed away together 
with the new oils it has gathered. 

When he is quite clean, and has had a brief frolic 
in the waves he has churned into yeast, lift the 
child to your lap, having laid a soft towel (warmed 
in winter) on the flannel apron. The duration of 
the bath ought not to exceed a few minutes ; good 
cannot, and some harm may come from soaking 
him for fifteen or twenty minutes. It must not be 
forgotten that the chief advantage of the bath over 
the simple washing consists in the more thorough 
cleansing it insures and the circumstance that all 
parts of the body are exposed to the same temper- 
ature. Should the child resist the motion to re- 
move him — and the chances are that he will — do 
not yield, but try some form of consolation. A 
toy, a game of bo-peep behind the flannel folds, a 



Babys Bath. 19 

flow of chirruppy talk, accompanied by the prompt 
removal of the tempting tub, will usually bring him 
to reason. 

Lose no time in enveloping the child in the warm 
folds of the flannel apron. Two towels ought to 
be used in drying him — a soft one to absorb the 
moisture, another somewhat coarser, but not harsh, 
to rub him gently with until the skin is suffused 
with a glow. When perfectly dry, his flesh sweet 
and pure with the exquisite lustre imparted by 
bath and friction, he is the most kissable object in 
nature. Nevertheless, do not delay to dress him. 
He is more likely to take cold now than before the 
exercise that has given both of you such delight, 
and for an hour or so thereafter should be kept in- 
doors and shielded from draughts. 

We have not spoken till now of the temperature 
of the room in which Baby gets his bath. In a 
general way, it ought to be about the same as 
that to which the child is accustomed in the house. 
Sixty-five degrees is not too low, if the child is 
habitually kept in that temperature, and it must be 
eighty if, as is far too often the case, the nursery 
is kept at that heat. If the weather makes it im- 
possible to bring the room to the proper tempera- 
ture, omit the immersion. Under all circumstan- 



20 Baby's Bath. 

ces it is of the first importance to avoid the least 
draught. 

There is a soft, white Turkish towelling, sold by 
the yard, which makes nice " wash-rags." Do not 
have them more than eight inches long, and above 
five wide for a very young child. It irritates him 
to have a splashing length of cloth dragged over 
his body, and you cannot cleanse his ears, etc., 
thoroughly if your hand is full of wet folds. Old 
linen, cut and hemmed, will answer your purpose 
well, but soon wears out. An excellent wash-cloth 
is a bit of fine, all-wool flannel, which has been 
washed several times, until what our grandmothers 
called the " ich " of new woollen stuffs is removed. 




WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW BABY 
SHOULD SLEEP. 

HE proverbial nine days of blind puppy- 
hood are not without their hint to the 
human mother. We shall have some- 
thing to say as to the intellectual awak- 
ening when "the precocious baby" sits for his 
likeness in our gallery of portraits. In dealing 
with the infant in his physical aspects, it is safe to 
recommend that for nine times nine days after birth 
he should be allowed to keep his eyes closed as 
much as Nature dictates, and would compel, if she 
were let alone. He must be washed, dressed, and 
fed at proper times, of course, but the modern cus- 
tom of keeping him in the simplest and plainest of 
night-gowns for the first month is based upon sound 
sense and physiological principles. 

On a Southern plantation, where I passed much 
of my childhood, the colored " mammy" lived in a 
snug cabin backed by a field of corn. One of the 
stories with which she regaled our eager ears was 



22 How Baby Should Sleep. 

how she loved to lie awake at midnight, when every 
creature on the place was asleep, and hear the corn 
grow. How, creeping to the window, she saw the 
plumy tops, faintly outlined against the stars, rise 
higher and higher, the lance-like blades stretch 
themselves, as a sleepy man his arms, while soft 
stirrings and rustlings, such as birds make in the 
nest, or a baby in the cradle, were varied by an oc- 
casional crackling as the roots burrowed in the 
earth and the horny stalk expanded. 

"For you see, my little ladies," was the moral 
of the pretty tale, 4< nothin' ken grow in the light. 
Corn and little chillun stan's still all day long. 
'Less" — this emphatic — " 'less they takes nice long 
naps, with the shetters all close', and everything 
kep' jess as quiet as ken be." 

Mammy may or may not have believed in her 
own theory. She assuredly grazed an important 
truth. Without going into technical explanation, 
we will admit as fact the assertion that the sleeping 
child does not fare so well in a brightly-lighted 
room as in the dark. The march of sanitary aes- 
thetics has swept away the stock nursery-picture of 
the young mother plying her needle by the evening 
lamp, her foot on the rocker, a lullaby on her lips. 
If there is but one shadowy, still corner in the 



How Baby Should Sleep. 23 

house, make it practicable for cradle or crib to 
stand there while Baby " gets his sleep out." Some 
children seldom accomplish this during the entire 
period of infancy. Even when Baby has been put 
to bed for the night his nursery is play-ground and 
sitting-room for older children ; nurse gossips with 
a visitor or fellow-servant while sewing on her own 
finery, or mamma finds the only quiet hour and 
place for reading by the sleeping child. Some- 
times papa takes pity on her lonely estate and 
brings up newspaper and cigar to the same cosey 
corner. Under these conditions Baby's best chance 
of obtaining the needful depth of slumber is to 
avail himself of the hours improved by mammy's 
maize — the season when deep sleep has overtaken 
everybody else in the house. 

It is objected by some practical minds — usually 
the class who believe in the " hardening process" 
— that it is unfair to subordinate the comfort of a 
whole household to the convenience of a single 
member, and that the youngest. Baby can be 
taught to sleep, they urge, as Maria Edgeworth 
was compelled by her father to write her books, in 
the living-room, the heart of family life. The clank 
of the sewing-machine, the jingle of the piano-forte, 
the babble of tongues, are naught to his sealed 



24 How Baby Should Sleep. 

senses when they have become accustomed to them. 
But in proportion as a baby's bodily and mental 
growth exceeds ours in rapidity does he require 
deep, undisturbed sleep. "To sleep like a healthy 
infant" is a phrase which loses pertinence when 
the diurnal siesta is a series of "cat-naps," unre- 
freshing because incomplete. 

Few children in our land suffer for want of food. 
Many grow up irascible in temper, and disordered 
in their nervous system, because habitually deprived 
of their lawful quantum of absolute rest. Each pre- 
mature awakening is a nervous shock. 

There is more diversity in natural gifts for sleep 
than in natural appetites for food. Heredity speaks 
out here, and with no uncertain sound. Insomnia 
is a disease the horrors of which are only known to 
those who have endured them. The poor woman 
who walks the floor and roams from room to room, 
trying bed, lounge, and rug in futile attempts to 
find sleep that comes, an uninvited guest, to others ; 
who dreads the hour of retiring and the sight of the 
pillow, surrounded for her by a swarm of fancies, 
only awaiting the settling of her head upon it to 
alight with buzz and bite, will probably see these 
experiences in some degree repeated in her off- 
spring. In order to be patient and wise in the 



How Baby Should Sleep. 25 

management of infants, we must study their ante- 
cedents and shape the regimen accordingly. 

To recapitulate : A baby must have all the sleep 
he will take, and be encouraged to take that all 
by the wooing influence of shade and silence. Next 
let the periods of rest, as he grows older, be stated 
and punctual. Nurses have a saying of children 
who have been kept awake beyond the usual time 
for the nap, "They are too sleepy to sleep/' and 
that "they have got past their sleep." Both 
phrases express clumsily the nervous excitement 
that drives away the only cure for abnormal irrita- 
tion. As to the methods of inducing sleep, the pen 
halts in perplexity. "Mothers' Manuals" are 
unanimous in the protest against rocking, trotting, 
patting, and walking a child into slumber. " Rock- 
a-by Baby "." is adjudged by latter-day discoveries 
to have been an Indian lullaby, the chant of the 
squaw to the papoose strapped to a sapling. Swing- 
ing-cradles are said "to unsettle the balance of 
brain-lobes M — whatever that may mean — and to 
vex the diaphragm ; rockers are unscrew r ed from 
the legs of cribs, and rocking-chairs banished from 
the nursery. 

Yet, says the young mother of two children, " my 
babies persist in turning night into day, as their 



26 How Baby Should Sleep. 

grandmamma says / did. I had a cradle for the 
first, when a week's terrible work had proved that 
he would, despite our efforts, sleep fitfully by day, 
and scream by night. I was obliged to keep my 
hand on that cradle all night long. For the second 
I bought a standing crib ; but I am no better off, 
since I have to pat her gently for hours to make 
her sleep moderately well." 

Another testifies: "I have reared six healthy 
children, none of whom would sleep without rock- 
ing. I tried faithfully and perseveringly with all, 
each in his turn, to persuade them to lie still in bed 
and dose off after the fashion of my neighbors' 
good darlings. They cried and fought against the 
method for two, three, four hours, until, worn out 
and fearful of results to them, I yielded. Two min- 
utes' rocking would put them to sleep, after which 
the motion was discontinued/' 

A volume of testimonials to like effect could be 
collated, and many volumes of the same size repro- 
bating the use of rockers. One point is clear 
through the maze of conflicting statements : It is 
best for Baby and for mamma that he should be 
taught from the beginning to go to sleep like a sen- 
sible, civilized, human being, in a stationary bed. 
So well worth the trouble of an experiment is the 



How Baby Should Sleep. 27 

formation of this habit that every mother should 
make the trial. 

See that he is warm, dry, and generally com- 
fortable ; tuck him in lovingly, darken the room, and 
insist, with all the will-power you can muster, that 
he shall yield himself to slumber. To borrow Solo- 
mon's advice, u Let not your soul spare for his cry- 
ing/' within reasonable bounds. Should he succumb 
once to your determination, the second struggle will 
be more brief, the third may never come. Be stern 
in denying a well child (and his mother) the indul- 
gence of rocking him to sleep in your arms, or, 
worse still, of pacing the floor with him to secure 
the same end ; though it is a luxury to the heart 
whose brooding love is but feebly imaged by the 
warm folding of the arms. Half a dozen repeti- 
tions of the delight will spoil him into a nuisance to 
the nurse and everybody else in the house. 



BABY'S DAY-NAP. 



~p§E<i^lHE dread of treatises and technicalities is 
j#S M)k so bound up in the heart of the average 
woman that I dare not insert a quotation 
so apt and lucid as that which is the text 
of this chapter without prefatory apology. 

Before copying it, or beginning our "Talk," let 
me express regret that so few women have even a 
smattering of physiological knowledge. Books that 
describe and treat of diseases and nothing else are 
edged, and often poisoned, tools in the hands of 
the unlearned. Much study of pathological litera- 
ture breeds nervous alarms and hypochondria. 
But it is sinful folly to be ignorant of the machinery 
of one's own body and the laws which govern its 
working. 

The objection to reading what are familiarly 
known as "doctors' books" should not exclude 
valuable works on hygiene and anatomy prepared 
expressly for non-professional readers. Mothers, in 
particular, should rid themselves of the common 



Babys Day- Nap. 29 

error of confounding the care of health with reme- 
dial measures. Many — and not always the illiter- 
ate — never think of the former apart from the latter. 
A vast amount of evil results from this confusion 
of thought. 

Now for our quotation from a popular writer on 
physiology (lately deceased) : * 

" The mysterious process which physiologists call ' meta- 
morphosis ' of tissue or interstitial change is the means by 
which in the human system force is developed and growth 
and decay rendered possible. It is merely the replacing of 
one microscopic cell by another ; and yet upon this simple 
process hang the issues of life and death, of thought and 
power. . . . From birth to adult age the cells of muscle, 
organ, and brain that are spent in the activities of life, such 
as digesting, growing, studying, playing, working, and the 
like, are replaced by others of better quality and larger num- 
ber. At least such is the case where metamorphosis is per- 
mitted to go on normally. 

"Infants must have sleep for repair and rapid growth, 
children for repair and moderate growth, middle-aged folk 
for repair without growth, and old people only for the mini- 
mum of repair." 

All this is so simple and sensible that an intellect 
would have to be obtuse indeed not to comprehend 
its bearings. 

* Dr. Edward Clark, author of Sex in Education, etc. 



30 Babys Day- Nap. 

I knew a young girl of artistic taste and eager 
love of learning, whose bodily health had always 
been perfect, when she was taken abroad at 
eighteen by a veteran tourist. The novice was 
rushed through picture-galleries, cathedrals, his- 
toric ruins, up the Rigi and down the Rhine, a 
breathless whirl of sight-seeing for three months 
without the intermission of a day. Delirium of 
delight was the first consequence of the mental 
feast ; then came nights of excited dreams, in which 
she was dragged through labyrinthine corridors 
hung with pictures and blocked up by statuary ; 
next agonizing insomnia, haunted by visions of 
what she had seen by daylight ; finally, brain-fever, 
that nearly cost her her life. 

Our Baby is thrust, without appeal to his voli- 
tion, into a world which, for the first five years of 
his life, is little else than a vast picture-gallery. 
We have a saying that he takes in knowledge at 
the pores, leaving out of sight the important con- 
sideration that this absorption is an intellectual 
process made up of the three stages of effort, ac- 
quisition, and reaction. He is all sensorium. In 
two years, or in three at the farthest, he masters 
the vernacular of the foreign land into which he has 
come ; becomes familiar with the names and uses 



Babys Day- Nap, 31 

of hundreds of articles ; makes acquaintance with 
the persons and dispositions of a strange people, 
whom at first he understands as little as they do 
him ; learns to walk, run, and play, and goes 
through every one of these processes with his whole 
heart, soul, and might. 

From the rapid review of Baby's tasks and his 
style of performing them we return, enlightened 
into solicitude, to the phrase, "repair ajid rapid 
growth." For wasted tissues and restless, teem- 
ing brain, nature offers — 

" The gentle thing 

Beloved from pole to pole " — 

Sleep. 

It is not only because Baby is young and tender 
that he gets tired and cross before his guardians 
have begun to warm to the work of the day. He 
is the busiest member of the domestic force. Com- 
paring his strength with yours, you may reckon 
that you would have paced ten or twelve miles of 
floor, composed and delivered an oration (with due 
regard to foreign idioms) on current events, and 
examined critically two or three hundred pictures, 
besides being opposed in a dozen designs and 
methods, in the four hours that separate breakfast- 



32 Babys Day- Nap. 

time from his mid-day nap. The need of the re- 
storer is, you perceive, imminent. The rule for 
securing it is plain : Fix an hour for Baby's siesta, 
and allow nothing to interfere with it. As it ap- 
proaches, take him upon your lap and prepare 
him for it as if night had come — as indeed it has to 
the little Mercury, whose day is bright and short. 
He may be unwilling, even recalcitrant. Take 
contumacy as additional evidence that sleep is im- 
peratively demanded. Remove his clothing, in- 
cluding shoes and stockings, and, in cold weather, 
array him in a loose flannel gown ; in summer, in 
one of linen or cotton. Neither child nor adult 
ought to lie down to sleep with a close band or 
bodice encasing lungs, stomach, or limbs. Sponge 
baby's hands and face with tepid water, and do not 
give him a heavy meal that would tax the digestive 
powers, but feed him moderately that the stomach 
may draw the blood from the brain. Lay him in 
crib or cradle in a darkened, quiet room, as far 
withdrawn as may be from all disturbance. If still- 
ness cannot be had short of the topmost story of 
the house, carry him up to that. Were he ill, you 
would grudge no pains that promised to buy for 
him respite from suffering. Half the care you 
would in such a case account a privilege will insure 



Baby s Day- Nap. ^ 

dreamless slumber that will relax the tense nerves 
and sooth the heated brain as with heavenly dews. 
Interdict all entrance to the chamber while the 
blessed work goes on. No other member of the 
family will suffer wrong in mind, body, or estate if 
slamming doors and sudden shouts in the vicinity 
of the sleeper be positively forbidden. Baby is 
being made over as good as new. The day is ap- 
proaching, all too rapidly, when you cannot com- 
pass this end for the growing boy — the grown 
man. 

" Cross babies never sleep well" is a nursery 
maxim that, like many other accepted formulas, 
is truest when read backward. Ideas get mixed 
in the tongue's slovenly jumble of cause and 
effect. 

The question is sometimes asked, " If my child 
will not sleep in the day, after I have made him lie 
down and taken proper measures to promote slum- 
ber, what is to be done ? " 

Admitting, as I am loath to do, the " will not," 
your duty remains unaltered. To borrow a bit of 
slang, go through the motions faithfully. If the 
eyes still refuse to close, console yourself with the 
reflection that the child's brain enjoys at least 
partial rest. It is better for him to lie awake in a 



34 Baby s Day-Nap. 

dim room for an hour than not to rest at all. 
Furthermore, the method of regular hours, if pa- 
tiently adhered to, will in the course of time induce 
a habit of somnolence. 

Should the noonday nap be long — say two hours 
in duration — few children above the age of two 
years will require a second, the early bed-time fall- 
ing in season to furnish the next period of profound 
repose. The yearling usually takes an afternoon 
sleep — a mere sip of refreshment at the end of 
another half-dozen miles. Establish an hour for 
this should you observe that when he does not have 
it Baby is cross and " worries." If allowed to fix 
his own time, he will probably resist the drowsi- 
ness until so late in the day as to interfere with his 
night's rest. Loosen his clothing before laying 
him down, removing the outer garments, shoes 
and stockings before slipping on the loose gown. 
It is a little troublesome to be obliged to dress him 
at his awakening, but the gain in comfort to him 
warrants the time and care given. 

Impress on the minds of the inmates of the home 
that it is really important to carry out your wishes 
with regard to your child's daylight rest. They 
should be as strictly respected as the regulations 
governing the times and order of the family meals. 






Babys Day- Nap. 35 

Punctuality on this head is of incalculable moment, 
if we pause to forecast the consequences of the fail- 
ure to supply material to meet "repair and rapid 
growth. " The longer nap of to-morrow does not 
atone for the loss of to-day. 



BABY'S NURSE. 




HE most important hired official in the 
household where there is a baby is, un- 
questionably, his nurse. 

Rough or discolored linen is a griev- 
ance that never proves fatal. The spleen, bodily and 
mental, engendered by bad cookery, passes away 
with time and a change of chef. The evil attendant 
upon mismanagement in either of these departments 
is immediately apparent. Sophistry cannot do away 
with the present witness of a badly-ironed shirt, nor 
will the neat kitchen and pleasant address of the 
cook beguile her employer into enjoyment of a 
spoiled dinner. The mischief wrought by an in- 
competent nurse is beyond calculation by earthly 
standards of gain or loss ; the wrong accomplished 
by the deceit, unsoundness of moral principle, or 
vicious temper of a woman in this position outlasts 
our generation. The awful sum-total is known 
only to the Omniscient Father, who knows and 
pities all. 



Babys A T urse. $7 

In admitting these truths, which no parent will 
deny, a direct question opposes the further discus- 
sion of our subject : Ought not every mother to un- 
dertake the sole charge of her infant ? 

The reply is cumbered with many conditions. 

If she is a widow, without other children, with 
no other duties in life, and in such robust health 
that she can, without injury to the child or herself, 
discharge the offices of wet-nurse, cook, nursery- 
maid, teacher, and mother — yes! 

If she has a husband whose claim upon her time 
and thought only death can annul, children who 
must be watched and taught, social duties which 
for the sake of her family and kind she may not 
ignore, if her physical and intellectual well-be- 
ing is a matter of vital importance to her family — 
110 ! 

Our enemies themselves being judges, American 
mothers are the most devoted in the world. Our 
friends — and ourselves — reluctantly agree that it is 
not altogether the fault of the climate that our 
women break down prematurely in looks and 
strength. It seems ungracious to call that devotion 
short-sighted that gave Baby a doting thrall for the 
first years of his existence, and entailed upon the 
man the burden of an infirm woman who outlived 



38 Babys Nurse. 

her usefulness just when the lad most needed the 
counsel and incentive no hireling can give. 

The mother's office in the home where a full 
corps of servants is employed is administrative 
rather than executive. It is a self-evident proposi- 
tion that she cannot be the controlling head when 
all of her time and strength is given to performing 
the part of the hands. When her means warrant 
the expense, she ought to hire a nurse for her baby. 
I am strongly tempted to say that if she can keep 
but one servant, that one should be a trustworthy 
woman who can lift the weight of daily cares from 
her shoulders in the nursery, and let the mistress 
make beds, sweep, bake, and brew, as a healthful 
change of occupation. Babies who are tended en- 
tirely by their mothers are, almost without excep- 
tion, troublesome by reason of their ceaseless ex- 
actions. It is common to say of their nurse, " She 
has not the knack of teaching her children to look 
after themselves ; they depend too much on her for 
care and amusement; she is their slave. " She is 
never rid of responsibility. If relieved for an hour 
or day from actual baby-tending she is unbalanced 
and restless. She is sure the lamb is worrying for 
her, as she is for him, and passes the season of rec- 
reation in wondering what blunder will be com- 



Babys Nurse. 39 

mitted by her substitute, even though it be her own 
mother. " Nobody understands him and his needs 
as I do ! " she pleads. In the extravagance of her 
idolatry she pities the parent who can be happy 
when her child is out of her sight. Her whole soul 
is wrapped up in the cherub (" Octopus " would be 
fitter name). 

The more reasonable mamma-nurse who serves 
her charge well, but not slavishly, is preternaturally 
strong of will if she can withstand the temptation 
to irregularity in the seasons of meals and sleep. 
He has a pretty way of pretending to be hungry 
when she knows he is not, or he is fretful when she 
is most anxious for him to be good ; and the ever- 
ready solace lies so near the uneasy head, the brim- w 
ming bosom aches under the beat and tugging of 
the dimpled hands. Visitors, the demands of the 
kitchen, laundry, housework in general, unite to 
postpone his mid-day nap, or she lets him play on 
the floor just a little longer in the evening when he 
is wakeful and a few more stitches are needed to 
complete a fascinating bit of needlework. 

Furthermore, she feels in and for him all too 
keenly to carry calm pulses and judgment through 
the daily routine of " taking care " of that which is 
the dearer part of herself. With a faithful deputy 



40 Baby s Nurse. 

in charge of him, she lends but a divided mind to 
other concerns. When there is no second-best cus- 
todian (herself being rated as first) she has no mind 
at all to bestow anywhere else. The best mothers 
are not those in whom the maternal instinct is cul- 
tivated into abnormal excrescence. The husband 
who insists that the only proper guardian of his 
children is his wife, or who grumbles at the addi- 
tional tax of a nurse's wages upon his pocket, may 
set down as a debt of his own making the with- 
drawal of wifely companionship from himself, and 
the lack of the pleasing arts that made his house 
"the jolliest place in town of an evening before 
Baby came." 

She who would bear healthy children must be 
sound in body. If she would likewise rear them 
into sane and useful man and womanhood, she must 
keep herself vigorous. 

Forgive the length of what you must not mistake 
for a preamble. It is relevant, and needed ! 

Baby's nurse, we will assume, is not his mother, 
but a woman selected because she possesses certain 
qualifications for the situation. 

The first of these is that she is fond of children 
and likes to take care of them. Ninety-nine per 
cent of the applicants for the place go through the 



'Baby's Nurse. 41 

form of declaring that they are never so happy as 
when thus employed. Reject the exception with- 
out another question. The nurse who is indiffer- 
ent to her charges, and gives them merely perfunc- 
tory attention, is not fit to be left alone with them 
for one hour. As to the ninety-and-nine who 
achieve the shibboleth of the guild, apply yet other 
tests. The love for children and aptitude for " get- 
ting along with them " are natural gifts, and essential 
to the proper discharge of nursely duties, but they 
are not everything, or enough to secure your con- 
fidence in applicant or incumbent. 

Health, cleanliness, sobriety, are recommendations 
that go without saying in well-regulated families. 
Added to them must be some degree of dexterity 
in handling the child, a cheerful disposition, pleas- 
ant speech, and, chiefest of all, entire willingness to 
obey orders in the management of him. Choose a 
young, inexperienced girl of fair intelligence, who 
is honest in the persuasion that you are wiser than 
she and in the intention to follow your instructions, 
sooner than the elderly paragon who is " competent 
to take the whole charge of an infant from its birth/' 
and smiles superior to your stipulation that this 
regimen shall be adhered to and that error avoided. 

The precious craft so lately launched is yours ! 



42 Babys Nurse. 

Whoever may compose the crew, be you pilot and 
captain. 

You will have to exercise infinite patience and 
much tact with this one of your subordinates. Her 
preparation for the position she attempts to fill has 
probably been of the most desultory and empiric 
order. It is unfortunate that our foundling-hospitals 
and day-nurseries are not also training-schools for 
child-nurses. Why not have these as well as cook- 
ing-schools and institutions crowded with novitiates 
in the art of caring for the sick ? 

As matters now stand, our nursery-maids are 
drawn from a class whose alternations of hurtful in- 
dulgence and brutal severity in the government of 
their own offspring are only surpassed by their ig- 
norance of hygienic principles. Norah or Elspeth 
or Thekla is tender-hearted, and means to be duti- 
ful. If she be also conscientious she will go through 
the routine you prescribe with mechanical fidelity. 
At heart she considers your rules new-fangled 
rubbish, and despises you with them. She was 
"reared," and saw many brothers and sisters 
brought up, on coarse and unwholesome food. In 
winter they were huddled like sheep — sometimes 
with swine and goats, and, as recent explorations 
of New York basements reveal, with geese — in 



Baby s Nurse. 43 

fetid rooms. In summer the doors were opened at 
morning and " the childher" let out. At night 
they were set wide while the vagrants w r ere driven 
in. That more than half of them died in early in- 
fancy, and none of the adults are really healthy or 
long-lived, does not alter your " nurse-girl's " con- 
viction that your snowdrop of an infant would fare 
as w r ell if tended after the same fashion, as when 
she and he are trammelled by a "silly pack of 
rules." 

Let your initial effort be to create in her a con- 
science. It is very unlikely that lectures on nur- 
sery dietetics, ventilation, infusoria, and fixed hours 
will leaven the soggy dough of her mind. It is a 
puttyish mass that may be impressed, but seldom 
interfused, by any alterative agency. Therefore 
impress yourself, ingeniously and with might. Pos- 
sess her with the idea that you are the ruling spirit 
of the establishment, and that your will is absolute 
in the nursery. Issue clear and distinct directions, 
then see, not ask, if they are obeyed. It is practic- 
able to do this without incurring the odium of spy- 
ing. The mother's is the right to visit the nursery 
at all hours, to take the child in her arms whenever 
the mood seizes her ; now and then to bathe and 
dress him herself or to prepare his food ; to inspect 



44 Baby s Nurse. 

drawers and closets when she will, even during "the 
competent's " reign. Cook might frown ominously 
were hers the invaded realm ; the untutored mind 
of the nurse-maid will probably see in these visita- 
tions but the natural " fussiness " of an over- fond 
parent who " hasn't enough to do to keep her out 
of mischief/' 

Her own attachment to her charge often becomes 
powerful, but it is usually animal fondness that 
springs from propinquity and a sense of proprietor- 
ship in that intrusted to her care. If this statement 
be questioned, let the experienced mistress bethink 
herself of the succession of" devoted " nurses who 
have in turn acted as her aids, and tell how many of 
them failed to make instant and entire transfer of 
allegiance with the next change of " place." They 
served you well for their term of office ; their show 
of affection for the " little angels " was sincere while 
it and the need of it lasted. Be content with this, 
and do not exact miracles of fortune. To bring the 
most intelligent of them into full sympathy with 
your " advanced views " would involve not only the 
necessity of a new moral and intellectual birth, but 
a birth into another sphere than that to which they 
still and forever belong. At her very best the hired 
nurse is an excellent machine which you must guide. 



Baby s Nurse. 45 

If it is unsafe to commit the entire care of the 
child's physical being to a subordinate, it is actual 
peril to the nobler part of him to allow it to be 
trained exclusively or principally by her. Little by 
little, as he advances in age and intelligence, the 
real owner should withdraw him from constant asso- 
ciation with servants. His intonations, turns of 
speech, his table manners and code of morals, must 
be learned from yourself. You are defrauded, 
although in a less degree than your child, when 
the contrary system prevails. It is profanation to 
vulgarize the baby-lisp by a foreign brogue or by 
negro dialect. That parent's soul should be moved 
to righteous wrath who hears from the innocent 
voice of his boy the slang of the stables or by- 
words that pass in the kitchen for wit. 

In no circumstances whatsoever ought your child 
to be chastised by his nurse. This outrage may and 
does occur sometimes in nurseries where wise and 
affectionate espionage prevails. The suspicion of 
the deed ought to be the signal for strict investiga- 
tion, and, should the fact be proved, summary dis- 
missal of the offender. There are women who wink 
at such misdemeanors ; as others, less culpable, con- 
done dishonesty in an employee who is in most 
respects " invaluable.'' The mistress retains in her 



46 Babys Nurse. 

service the nurse who beats or slaps the baby she 
is hired to keep in safety and honor, and by so doing 
sinks below the level of the ignorant creature whose 
own childish peccadilloes were visited by a leather 
strap or broomstick. The stream cannot rise higher 
than the fountain ; but the educated woman who, 
in Christian charity and amiable cowardice, excuses 
the act on the score of " the invaluable^ " hasty 
temper, or affects not to be cognizant of it because 
" it is not convenient to change just now," sins 
against heart, reason, her conscience— most deeply 
of all, against her child. 




BABY AT HOME IN WINTER. 

F the danger that the monarch of the nur- 
sery may take cold in winter be an ever- 
frowning Scylla to his custodians, Cha- 
rybdis is the probability that, in their 
solicitude, their charge would be over-heated. Next 
to bed, bath-tub, and nursery-lamp, the most im- 
portant article of furniture in the room where the 
child sleeps and passes most of his waking hours is 
a thermometer. If the mercury rises to seventy-five 
degrees, Charybdis is imminent ; if it sinks below 
sixty-five degrees, beware of Scylla. 

The coverings of body and bed must be both 
light and warm. For this purpose all-wool fabrics 
for underwear and wraps cannot be too highly 
recommended.. The soft, elastic knitted socks, 
shirts, leggings, and sacques of Shetland and Sax- 
ony wool, described by Dickens as a " complication 
of defences against the cold, and forming a complete 
suit of armor, with a headpiece and gaiters " ; 



48 Baby at Home in Winter. 

cradle-blanket of the same ; skirts of silk-warp flan- 
nel ; hall-wraps of cashmere, merino, flannel, or 
all-wool delaine, serve the purpose of excluding the 
wintry air without burdening weak infants and 
clogging the pores of strong ones with unabsorbed 
perspiration. Nothing can take the place of flannel 
worn nearest the body. The gentle friction main- 
tains natural warmth and dislodges dead scarf-skin, 
and the texture allows the passage and evaporation 
of moisture that would become humid poison if re- 
tained. 

The most conscientious nurse I ever knew lived 
for ten years in one family, and served three chil- 
dren with tireless devotion. In all matters of diet, 
exercise, cleanliness, and general regimen she was 
exemplary, but she had one incurable habit. Being 
herself thin of frame and blood, she labored under 
the haunting dread that the "blessed creatures" 
might catch cold. Unless prevented by the 
mother's authority, she bundled them up for out- 
door excursions until they could hardly stir a limb ; 
heaped Master Baby's perambulator with fluffs and 
furs, and bound a double Shetland veil over his nos- 
trils and loudly-protestant mouth. It availed little 
that the mistress prescribed, to a feather's weight, 
what coverings were to be used on bed and crib. 



Baby at Home in Winter. 49 

Her nightly round of the juvenile encampment was 
as likely as not to reveal that nurse had added her 
shawl to the blankets of the little girls' couch, con- 
cealing it with pious fraud by spreading the white 
counterpane overall; while "her boy" was swathed 
in flannel petticoats and overtopped by davets, until 
every thread of his night-clothes was soaked, and 
the imprint of his small person on the linen sheet 
was as well defined as that of a Pompeian skeleton 
in the wet ashes that made his sarcophagus. 

It is generally useless to argue against the idio- 
syncrasies of the unlearned. The processes — if they 
deserve the name — of untrained minds are past 
finding out, since they cannot describe, nor others 
define them. The mother should be intelligent, if 
her employees cannot be made to see reason, and 
diplomatic in correcting evils she cannot avert. 

The inordinate love of the lower classes for sweets 
and fat is as notorious as their propensity to bur- 
row in feather-beds under a mountain of rugs and 
" comfortables " — tumuli of living bodies, effete 
exhalations, saturated cotton, and unsavory wool. 
The peculiarity is a curious study, and a sociological 
one rather than a problem for the physiologist. 

The child who is drawn from a den of wadded 
coverings, dripping with sweat, which every pore 
3 



50 Baby at Home in Winter. 

gapes to emit, the entire system enervated by the 
drain, escapes taking cold only by miracle. If it is 
the mother's duty to see that he is kept warm, it is 
equally essential that she should manage not to 
have him sodden. 

Until he is able to run alone, Baby should not be 
suffered to sit on the floor in cold weather, however 
healthy he may be. This is a hard saying, at first 
sight. It is such a pleasure to himself, such a re- 
lief to nurse to have him established on the carpet, 
a pillow behind him to save his head should he lose 
his balance, playthings all around him, while other 
work goes on. He likes to sprawl and roll, and in 
this way soon learns the use of his limbs. It is not 
good for him to be handled and cosseted continually. 
The safe mean between the two courses of treat- 
ment involves some work and ingenuity, but both 
pay in the end. 

In the best- warmed room there is inevitably a 
current of cooled air close to the floor, in which, as 
Baby sits on the carpet, his feet are bathed, while his 
shoulders may overtop it. It is a common thing to 
discover, on taking him up and undressing him for 
the mid-day nap, that his toes are icy while his hands 
are warm. Mamma exclaims at the phenomenon, 
chafes his feet, feeds and puts him to sleep, and 



Baby at Home in Winter. 51 

when he awakes pulls him, glowing and dewy, from 
the blankets, gives him w r arm drink to encourage 
further perspiration, and plumps him down again 
into the cold-air bath. The middle of the bed or 
the corner of the lounge is the safer place for him. 
Barricade him with cushions, and if he can creep, 
add a chevaux-de-frise of chairs, leaving a clear 
space immediately about him wherein he can dis- 
port himself. When older give him the wider field 
of a small, deep mattress, covered by a folded quilt, 
near the middle of the room to escape the heat of 
the register or grate, while he is beyond the reach 
of window- draughts. A nursery basket-chair, made 
luxurious with padded sides and back, should be 
supplemented by a hassock for the child's feet, if 
you prefer this seat to the others named. With the 
movable ledge or table that goes with it firmly ad- 
justed in front and spread with playthings, the little 
fellow will be content for hours. If he, by-and-by, 
drums with his heels on the foot-rest, writhes and 
cries impatiently, recognize the signs that his spine 
is tired, his limbs cramped, and liberate him. A 
roll on the bed, a toss in the air, a ride on mamma's 
foot will restore circulation and good humor. He 
is born a thinking animal, and, unless spoiled from 
the first, is amenable to reasonable treatment. 



52 Baby at Home i7i Winter. 

Above all things do not let yourself now, nor ever, 
forget that he has " no language but a cry." No 
well-managed baby ever yet cried from the love of 
lamentation. 

I have alluded to window-draughts. Not only 
is the air that presses against the inside of the glass 
colder than that which lies a foot farther within the 
chamber, but between sashes and casings trickle 
pertinacious threads of outer atmosphere, defiant of 
sash-locks and weather-strips. Baby soon learns to 
enjoy the outlook from his eyrie. It is an easy and 
pleasant way of entertaining him, and the tokens of 
growing intelligence displayed in his interest in 
other children, in dogs and horses, are vastly " cun- 
ning." Still, keep him from the post of observa- 
tion in inclement weather ; and since he cannot 
discern the face of the sky, nor interpret the signals 
of weather-vanes, and is withal a creature of habit, 
it is well not to accustom him to a seat on your 
knee at the window after the summer days are 
over. Again, a hard saying ! To the habitual 
passer-by, and how much more to " papa coming 
home," the sash is blank when it ceases to frame 
the laughing face, the fluttering hands clutching, 
with Chinese disdain of perspective, at people and 
things across the way ; the white-robed dumpling of 



Baby at Home hi Winter. 53 

a body bouncing and springing in arms that are at 
once confinement and embrace. There is no pret- 
tier style of window-decoration than a clean, win- 
some baby, no more satisfactory casement-garden 
than a pair or a trio of such crowding the em- 
brasure. 

Examine several times each day into the con- 
dition of Baby's feet and hands, especially the 
former. While they remain warm, his risks of tak- 
ing cold are reduced to a minimum. If they are 
chill, something is wrong. The shoe-latchet may 
be too tight, the socks too small, or the clasping of 
other garments about the limbs impede the flow of 
the blood. If none of these causes exist, he has 
been in a current of unfriendly temperature. The 
child who sleeps with cold feet is almost certain to 
sicken in consequence. If he has the trick of kick- 
ing off the coverings while asleep, sew loops on the 
lower edge of the mattress and corresponding but- 
tons on the blankets, or strings on both, and fasten 
them together when you lay him down. For chil- 
dren of two years old, or thereabouts, long flannel 
or canton-flannel drawers, coming down below the 
feet, may be used. 

Hall-wraps of some description are indispensable 
at this season. A half or whole square of flannel, 



54 Baby at Home in Winter. 

bound with ribbon, finished by a feather-stitched 
hem, or overcast in scallops with silk or worsted, 
is the simplest form. Bewitching variations are 
achieved by embroidery and lace. Whatever the 
form of muffler, do not take an infant-in-arms 
through draughty passages and into rooms of lower 
temperature than his nursery without additional 
covering. If he is very young, cast a fold over the # 
head, leaving room to breathe. Without " fussing " 
or " coddling" he may be carried through the win- 
ter a stranger to catarrh or croup. Bear in mind 
that, although he belongs to the family of half-hardy 
plants, injudicious tenderness may convert him into 
an exotic. 

The air of the nursery should be thoroughly 
changed every morning by throwing the windows 
wide for half an hour or more. Some intelligent 
housewives are backward to believe that fresh air 
warms in half the time required to heat a stagnant, 
germ-laden atmosphere. If Baby can be removed 
at awakening into another chamber for bath and 
breakfast, and, while these are in progress, the 
nursery swept or brushed, the bedding aired, furni- 
ture dusted {the fluff collected by broom and duster 
being burned), the routine of the morning will be 
satisfactorily expedited. If you, the mother, are 



Baby at Home in Winter. 55 

your own house-maid, and there is no other room 
into which he can be taken, draw the crib to a cor- 
ner, surround it by a screen, cover the sleeping oc- 
cupant with mosquito-netting, and let in the air 
gradually, while you use carpet-sweeper and cheese- 
cloth duster, slightly dampened. But air the room 
in some way ! Long before the baby's nap is over 
the sweet currents that have chased out foul odors 
will have absorbed kindly the warmth of fire or 
register, being a crisp and ready conductor of heat. 
The last suggestion I offer on the subject of this 
chapter will win more tolerant hearing than if it had 
been put forward ten years ago. When it can be 
done, have an open fireplace in the room where 
Baby lives and moves, and would like to breathe. 
If I dared, I would add that a wood-fire on the 
hearth night and morning is an inestimable purifier 
and ventilator. If your means warrant the purchase 
of wood, use it in preference to coal for an all-day 
fire that may be meant only to enliven a back- 
ground of furnace-heat. The ruddy gleam is a 
comely and most wholesome auxiliary to the view- 
less source of caloric. The air-tight iron stove, 
with its train of headaches and other ills, has had its 
reign of popularity. With the advance of sanitary 
luxuries we are tearing out "summer-fronts" and 



56 Baby at Home in Winter. 

deposing heaters. Lares and Penates that could 
never be beguiled to occupy niches above a row of 
illuminated mica peep-holes or rayless registers, 
shake the dust from their robes and settle benig- 
nantly again over veritable hearth-stones warmed by 
real embers. Baby basks with exceeding delight 
in the glow of the blazing sticks behind the high 
fender. He is, ingrain, a Gheber, and his cult is 
eagerly offered. You lay up for him untold stores 
of beautiful associations with home and yourself, 
idealize the prose of your own life, when you draw 
aside the wire defence at night-fall, undress him in 
the firelight, and let him curl and stretch his pink 
toes in the genial warmth, while he studies the 
fantasies of flame. 

I should not use the word "prose" in this con- 
nection. The romance of the mother's existence is 
a blessed, a triumphant reality. Artists crave ad* 
mission to her sanctum, bearing away subjects 
which the world worships ; poets kiss the hem of 
her garment ; she makes the pictures, the idyls, 
the history of her age. 



BABY ABROAD IN WINTER. 




HAVE spoken of our Baby as a " half- 
hardy plant." This family in the vege- 
table world varies materially with change 
of climate. The English ivy drapes 
church and tower and garden-wall with evergreen- 
ery in our Middle States. Evergreen roses and 
delicate varieties of laurestinus, tenderly housed in 
New York and New Jersey, hold their glossy leaves 
all the year around in Virginia, and the Luxem- 
bourg tea-rose often blooms in the open air on 
Christmas Day in the same latitude. 

Let us take a lesson from inanimate nature in 
planning to secure for our human blossom such an 
amount of oxygen and sunlight as may keep it in 
health and color until " green leaves come again." 
Some mothers seriously argue that the only actual 
safety, in a severe climate, against the ills succeed- 
ing what is accounted first as a slight cold, consists 
in keeping the infant indoors from the first of No- 



58 Baby Abroad in Winter. 

vember until the middle of April. He is allowed 
the range of a house kept at a uniform temperature, 
is not suffered to sit at the windows or visit the 
kitchen, and, unless smitten by accidental draughts, 
or subjected to unforeseen fall of heat in the sum- 
mer-like rooms, weathers (if the word be permissi- 
ble in this connection) the winter fairly well. Not 
quite so well, perhaps, as does the living ball of 
compounded oil and dirt that has rolled for eight 
months on the floor of an Esquimaux hut, seeing 
no light but that of the lamp beside which his 
mother plies bone-needle and deer-skin thong, but, 
on the whole, for a product of artificial civilization, 
passably well. 

While mothers in our Northern clime may not, 
like their Southern sisters, dismiss their bantlings 
to bask in sunlight for the greater part of the day, 
they should count the cost closely before turning 
their rooms into a conservatory-prison. As the 
days grow long and bland, the exotic baby must 
learn to inhale an atmosphere raw and sharp by 
contrast with that to which his lungs have become 
accustomed during his hibernation. It is not a fig- 
ure of speech to say that he suffers at every pore. 
The day that seems mild to the nurse sauntering 
with him under a sun-warmed wall is rigorous to 



Baby Abroad in Winter. 59 

his bleached flesh and sensitive lungs. Generally 
he pulls through it. The vigilant care that has reg- 
ulated the temperature of his prison for a third of 
the year decrees that his trial-expeditions into the 
new zone shall be made on exceptionally warm 
days, and avoids for him morning and evening chill. 

The antipode of the hot-house system is the hard- 
ening process. Of this, childless house-wives, spin- 
sters of whit-leather theories, and a few daring 
eclectics among professional practitioners of hy- 
gienic arts, are the most strenuous advocates. Now 
and then a father of independent views subjects the 
most dependent creature within his reach to practi- 
cal demonstration of his hobby. 

I knew such a one, who compelled his only son 
and heir to go barefoot winter and summer, until 
he was twelve years old. When the boy got his 
trousers' legs wet wading through snow-drifts and 
puddles he wore them wet until bed-time. His 
parent's hypothesis, based upon knowledge of the 
regimen that made the noble Indian fl all face," was 
that the consequences of exposure to variations 
of heat and cold depend upon habit. Hunters, 
soldiers, sailors, and the red men were the illustra- 
tions of his lectures. 

That the example of a child who sleeps in a civ- 



60 Baby Abroad in Winter. 

ilized bed, beneath blankets, eats hot dinners, and 
sits, while under a tight roof, in a warmed room 
may differ materially from any or all of these models 
of superiority to climatic changes did not enter into 
his calculations. The boy was afflicted with a per- 
petual cold in the head, but so were children who 
were shod more substantially than with paternal 
conceit. When a lad of ten years old, the influenza 
developed into catarrh, which lasted him until his 
death at forty. 

Thus acts the mother who believes and holds for 
certain that her baby ought to go out in all weather 
that is not positively stormy. Fortunately for the 
survival of any, even the fittest, this class of mothers 
is never large. We do, however, occasionally meet 
the subjects of their heroic practice on " black-frost " 
days, or when the air is thick with dust swirling 
before March blasts, when every second woman 
and every fourth man who passes the melancholy 
perambulator turns to look and wonder, silently or 
aloud, " Who is so bereft of common sense as to 
send that child out-of-doors to-day ? ,J 

Let the busy mother lay down an imperative 
rule, as the autumn advances, that the child, if well, 
must be sent out into the open air whenever the 
weather is tolerably fine. The routine of domestic 



Baby Abroad in Winter. 61 

occupation — even house-cleaning — ought to be sus- 
pended for an hour as near noon as is compatible 
with his siesta ; the little one wrapped up warmly, 
but not smothered in mufflers, deposited in his car- 
riage, and committed to the care of a trustworthy 
guardian. This last clause is many-sided. It must 
be a guardian who will not be beguiled by show- 
windows to draw the nursling along a damp pave- 
ment when the other side of the way is dry and 
sunny, nor by the love of shopping into leaving 
carriage and occupant on the sidewalk while she is 
cheapening bargains within. She will know enough 
to turn her face homeward w r hen the wind veers, 
and bleakness supersedes serenity ; will be too 
humane, as w T ell as too conscientious, to make the 
time allotted for the promenade the occasion for 
visiting her own friends. 

Many children have paid with their lives for the 
stolen indulgence of nurses' calls upon acquaint- 
ances living in crowded "flats" and basements, 
fetid rooms where animal and stove-heat blend into 
that form of mephitism sadly familiar to physicians 
and other benevolent visitors as " tenement-smell." 
The return through fresh air may have shaken it 
from the baby's garments by the time he is restored 
to his mother's arms. The invisible seeds drawn 



62 Baby Abroad in Winter. 

in with his breath that may fructify into disease 
tell no tales that day or week. 

When winter is an accepted fact, still watch for and 
seize upon milder noons than are the rule, preparing 
the child to sustain colder weather by thicker cloth- 
ing and wraps. His panoply of worsted or fur 
should be securely adjusted before he leaves the 
house. Knitted woollen drawers, leggings, and 
overshoes, all in one garment, fastened at the w r aist, 
make everything safe as to lower extremities. 
Long mittens, shirred with elastic at the elbows, 
leave the hands free and warm. Pack him in with 
soft, pliable cushions, and tie, strap, or button 
the outermost covering so that it cannot be easily 
displaced. For head-gear use a wadded cap, com- 
ing down over the ears and tied under the chin. 

A word as to the Shetland veil or whatever kin- 
dred appliance takes its place. Much observation 
of its use and abuse has inclined me to the belief 
that it does more harm than good. If the child 
submits to it without outcry, and does not work 
himself into a passion trying to tear it away, it is 
almost sure to become w r et from the condensation 
of his breath on a cold day, or with saliva, if he be 
at the teething stage. Should it remain dry, the 
wearer is vexed by the semi-opaqueness of the 



Baby Abroad in Winter. 63 

fabric, the teasing uncertainty with which passing 
objects are discerned through interstices in the 
weaving, and his eyes are irritated by the fluff dis- 
lodged by his breath and motions, while like par- 
ticles find their way into the lungs. Still, since 
winter-airs cut with rough edges, and flinty dust 
raised by them is pernicious to Baby's eyes and 
lungs, some shield must be devised to temper the 
one and arrest the other. Will the mother accept 
and utilize the following suggestion ? 

Screw a number of knobs or buttons, such as are 
used by carriage-makers, at regular intervals around 
the front of the folding top of the perambulator. 
Adjust straps or ribbons at wider intervals along 
the upper edge of the carriage itself, all the way 
around from the junction of the top with the body 
on the left to the like point on the right. Attach 
to these a net of some thin stuff bound with ribbon 
or galloon, and furnished with loops or strings cor- 
responding with the buttons and straps on the car- 
riage, completely enclosing the open front. The 
veil should be drawn smoothly, but not so tightly 
as to strain it, forming an inclined plane from the 
projecting hood of the vehicle to the foot, clearing 
the baby's face entirely, and raised above the reach 
of his meddling hands. He can see all that goes 



6\ Baby Abroad in Winter. 

on about him, the wind is broken, and the dust 
checked by the simple contrivance. Every woman 
who has known the comfort of a light lace veil hung 
before eyes and mouth on a gusty day will appre- 
ciate the advantage of our screen. The mother's 
taste may have play in selecting the material for 
the tent-like covering. Mosquito-netting, blue, 
green, w T hite, or buff (red would hurt the eyes), 
would be the cheapest and most convenient fabric. 
jSb7*-lace net, bound and tied with blue or cardinal- 
red, would be pretty and quite substantial enough. 
Silk illusion — of which ladies' veils are made — 
green, blue, or gray, would have to be joined neatly 
and fancifully at the selvaged edges, a single width 
being too narrow for our purpose, but would serve 
the desired end admirably, perhaps better than any 
other stuff in very cold weather. An infant thus 
guarded might be wheeled through a driving snow- 
storm without getting damp. Aunts and mothers 
may study out pleasing and novel variations of our 
shelter, such as home-made nets, crocheted (with- 
out figures), of silk, Shetland and Iceland wool. 



THE PRECOCIOUS BABY. 




LL the offspring of some parents are pre- 
cocious, down to the dozenth reduplica- 
tion of the original prodigy. As a rule, 
such lucky fathers and mothers enjoy a 
monopoly of the knowledge that their children are 
without exception vara avcs. Jewellers and fash- 
ionable jargon to the contrary, there cannot be a 
cluster, or even a pair of solitaires, nor can a 
unique be repeated. Parental boastfulness in the 
possession of a whole brood of phenomena may be 
amusing, and assuredly is tiresome. Further than 
this it does not require notice. 

Walking among my flower-borders this morning, 
I stopped to admire a bed of zinnias. Not the 
plants cultivated under that name by our grand- 
mothers — stiff of stalk, the single row of hard-hued 
petals as prim as if cut out of glazed paper. My 
beauties are many-doubled and of every imaginable 
tint, from snow-white to changeable carmine, from 



66 The Precocious Baby. 

straw-color to burning orange. Apart from the rest 
stood one of dwarfish height, but hale and stocky. 
On the top of the upright main stem was the soli- 
tary old-fashioned blossom of the collection. In 
color it was a dull purple-pink, and the single row 
of sparse petals surrounded a conical brown heart 
studded with yellow stamens. It was, to borrow 
an Irish idiom, "the very moral" of a country 
cousin at a ladies' lunch in the city. At the height 
of three inches from the ground a branch shot at 
a sharp angle out of the stubby parent-stalk and 
overtopped it. The terminal bud of this had ex- 
panded into a flower as large, and of foliations as 
prodigal, as a dahlia. The hue was exquisite and 
indescribable — rich red-cream in the centre and 
shading by faint, delicious degrees to the outer- 
most rim of white, that was both pure and warm. 

Each one of the country cousin's kindred has 
brought forth flowers after her own kind. The 
poor thing seemed awkwardly aware of her dis- 
similarity in this particular, and to stare upward in 
meek marvel at her ascendant, as if asking by what 
miracle and why the nonpareil of the parterre had 
sprung from her side. 

The Precocious Baby as often as not owes his 
being to such an unlikely root. For all we can dis- 



The Precocious Baby. 67 

cover or suggest, he is a freak of Nature. Some 
occult law of heredity may be answerable for his 
extraordinary endowments, as for the startling love- 
liness of the queen of the zinnias. His mother's 
note-book, mental or written, records that at an 
age when other babies are phlegmatic lumps of 
adipose tissue he " sits up and takes notice " of all 
that passes in his little world. He is more apt to 
talk than walk early, has a capricious appetite, and 
gets along with less sleep than do his sisters and 
brothers. His eager questions, nonplus mamma 
before he can run alone, and his amazing activity 
of mind so far overcomes her purpose not to " push 
him forward" that she does not interfere when he 
"picks up his letters somehow," makes a poor 
feint of regret that he " devours every book he can 
lay his hands upon " by the time he is three years 
old. Up to that date he was dependent upon 
others for the information he could not collect by 
the aid of his eyes and ears, and he forgets noth- 
ing thus gained. His memory teems with rhymes 
and recitations caught from one, or at most, two 
repetitions in his hearing. All print being open 
to him, as Mr. Wegg has it — his hungering after 
knowledge is a sort of divine madness. He ab- 
sorbs it through every sense. It is hardly a figure 



68 The Precocious Baby. 

of speech to say that he inhales learning. Kinder- 
garten exercises are a bagatelle, primary depart- 
ments an absurdity to a pupil who does sums in 
fractions in his head faster than his teacher can on 
the slate, takes to languages as wild-fowl to water, 
and tucks Bryant's translation of The Iliad, or a 
volume of Shakespeare, under his pillow at night 
for light reading at sunrise while he is waiting for 
the sleepy heads in the house to get up. At school 
he bears off all the prizes, and while examinations 
are going on he eats little and dreams all night 
long of the day's tasks and triumphs. 

The entire family connection is immensely proud 
of him and elate with prophecies of his future 
greatness. Each hamlet has one "coming man" 
of tender years. He is usually singularly attractive 
in appearance. If not pretty, he has an " intellect- 
ual" look. His eyes tell the story of mental gifts 
when other features are discreet. Mother and 
aunts rave over his " spirituelle " expression, and 
if he be thin and pale, add "ethereal" to their 
working capital of descriptive adjectives. His 
clever speeches are neighborhood bon mots, and 
irrigate the else dusty waste of "Children's Say- 
ings " in the family newspaper. He is trotted out 
for the entertainment of visitors before he can use 



The Precocious Baby. 69 

his corporeal members in that exercise, is the show- 
boy of Sabbath-school concerts and Infant-school 
anniversaries. 

My pen lags and my heart drops in writing the 
words. We all know and recollect the victim. The 
dot in white frock or velvet tunic lifted to the front 
of the platform — his legs are too short to ascend by 
the steps leading up from the level of the audience. 
The tiny figure is thrown into relief by banks of 
flowers, gas-burners hum and flare overhead, per- 
haps foot-lights give back the flash of his wide eyes, 
betray the nervous pucker of the baby mouth, the 
twitching baby-fingers, as he catches his breath 
under the shock of meeting a thousand eyes fo- 
cussed upon himself. He stands there gallantly. 
The father, who sees him through a prism of happy 
mist, would faint, falter, and forget his role were 
he the orator. Everybody is still — some curious, 
some admiring, more compassionate, as the piping 
treble — strained, as a wren might emulate chanti- 
cleer — gives out the twenty, fifty, one hundred 
lines committed to the phenomenal memory. He 
does it well. The precocious three-year-old is no 
parrot, and game to the quivering backbone. His 
eyes are luminous ; the wee pipe is marvellously 
modulated ; he makes his pretty, formal bow, and 



jo The Precocious Baby. 

has his draught of sweet poison in the applause 
that succeeds. 

"The beauty of it is that he understands all he 
says ; enters with his whole soul into the spirit of 
the occasion, " says the adulatory buzz into which 
the clamor subsides. 

The pity of it ! O, the pity of it, my sisters ! 
Where is the horticulturist so dull that he does 
not see to it that his rose-slips are rooted be- 
fore he lets them bloom, and who does not hold 
back young trees from bearing ? Where the stock- 
breeder who would put a yearling colt on the race- 
course ? 

It would be demanding impossibilities to warn 
parents not to feel pride in a child whose mental 
expansion is rapid and fine. But parental vanity is 
in excess of affection when sensible people stimu- 
late the already too-alert mind to acquisition, the 
specific purpose of which (so far as the child can 
see) is exhibition. 

A bright Baby is infinitely more interesting, even 
in his home, than one who is a comparatively stolid 
animal. It is parent-nature and human nature to 
exult in the ownership of the prize. But, before 
resigning themselves to the indulgence of the 
natural emotion, it behooves his guardians to study 



The Precocious Baby. 71 

seriously the cause and character of the early fruit- 
age. 

Dr. Weir Mitchell, in his valuable little treatise 
on a Wear and Tear," says (I quote from memory) : 

"Take plenty of wholesome food, plenty of 
exercise in the open air, and plenty of sleep, and 
there is no limit — practically — to the work you can 
get out of your brain. " 

Remembering that this is written of grown-up 
brain-workers, we may yet apply the spirit of the 
assurance to our Baby. His ordinary expenditure 
of vital and nervous forces is, compared with that 
of the busiest adult who lives up to Dr. Mitchell's 
rule, as the speed of light to that of sound. At 
least half of his life, up to the age of seven, should 
be passed in sleep. Subtract from the rest the 
time needed for eating, and you have a remainder 
that is all working-days. He is learning, taking 
in, and assimilating during every hour of these. 
There is — practically — no limit to his self-imposed 
tasks. Your business is to see that his physical 
system is prepared to sustain the strain, his zeal 
not being according to knowledge. The restless 
little feet go until he falls exhausted in his tracks, 
unless you interpose with compulsory repose. 
The more restless mind is ever on the stretch, tug- 



72 The Precocious Baby. 

ging at burdens heavier than it can lift, wrestling 
with problems he cannot put into words — a very- 
ant in diligence and pluck, without the prudential 
instinct that makes the insect give over useless 
effort before strength is gone. 

These things being so, it is a cruel imposition 
for you to tempt the worker with additional enter- 
prises, to spur the thoroughbred who always does 
his best and does not know when he has reached 
the limit of his endurance. 

Teach a quick-witted, nervous infant little that is 
not really necessary for him to know until he is five 
or six years old. He will gain nothing, and you 
may lose all, by the forcing process. Should his 
life be spared, he will not be the better scholar at 
five and twenty for having read fluently at three. 
Nature will pause for recuperation at some stage of 
the race. Hard-wood trees are proverbially slow 
in growth, and that intellectual development which 
goes on neither faster nor more slowly than accords 
with physical vigor can work no harm to child or 
man. 

Lay the foundation of bodily health broad and 
firmly before beginning to build the superstruct- 
ure of mental endowments. 

All precocious babies do not die young, although 



The Precocious Baby. J$ 

there is enough truth in the saying, u Too bright 
to live," to dash with dread the mother's pride 
in her clever bantling. That fragile body needs 
especial care which is the prison of the ardent 
mind, and not the comfortable home in which it 
dwells without chafing at narrow quarters. Yet 
premature bloom is not invariably synonymous 
with incipient decay. As many infant phenomena 
live to a good old age in respectable commonplace- 
ness as fill early graves. John Stuart Mill, it is 
said, read Greek at three years of age, his British- 
oak constitution withstanding the w T ear and tear of 
the abnormal intellectual development. One of 
the most uninteresting men I know, who never by 
accident or design utters aught except the stalest 
platitudes, revelled in Milton, Cowper, and Spen- 
ser at eight, and at ten arose by stealth on winter 
nights to read Horace in the original by the blaze 
of pitch-pine knots he had secreted under his bed, 
and thrust, one at a time, into the fireplace to pro- 
long the illumination, he, meanwhile, kneeling on 
the hearth so near the flame as to scorch his hair. 

Each of the instances cited might be multiplied 

indefinitely by the reader's memory. She need not 

tax it to invoke the vision of the long rows of short 

graves stretching away in mournful perspective, 

4 



74 The Precocious Baby. 

wherein lie the faded " flowers " of countless fami- 
lies. 

"Our best and brightest!" The phrase is not 
trite read through the tears of her who sets it be- 
low the ownerless name of the child for whom her 
hopes were highest, through whom came her sharp- 
est grief. 

If by resolute self-denial of maternal vanity, 
right judgment of values and results, and submis- 
sive co-operation with natural laws, she can keep 
"best" the casket that holds the "brightest" 
jewel, our Precocious Baby's mother will conserve 
her own peace of mind and protect her darling 
against himself. 



PHOTOGRAPHING THE BABY. 



i 


m 

4^: 



WOULD give half my fortune to have 
such a portrait of my boy/' said a man 
in my hearing the other day. 

He stood before a picture hung in 
the sitting-room of a friend — the likeness of a child 
five or six years eld. The painting was excellent, 
but its value as a work of art was small compared 
with that given by the circumstance that the face 
smiling from the canvas was a faithful presentment 
of one which would never again look back love into 
the mother's eyes while time endures. 

"It was taken from a photograph/' she said, 
softly. " He went with me to the photographer's 
a few days before he fell ill." She brought out 
from a drawer a neat volume, lettered on the side 
with her boy's initials and the date of his birth. 
He was five years old when he died, and there were 
ten pictures. The first was taken in the fourth 
month of his short life. Beneath each was recorded 
the day and the hour ^f which the likeness was 



J 6 Photographing the Baby. 

caught and fixed by the sun, with, once in a while, 
another note. Under one was, " The day after lie 
first put on short clothes ; " under a second, "Our 
little man s first trousers." A third depicted him 
in sailor-jacket and breeches, the round, white 
throat rising from a widely-opened collar embroid- 
ered with an anchor and " H. M. S." A band 
crossing the chest diagonally was lettered " PINA- 
FORE.' ' " Our Midshipmite, May 13, 18— ," ran 
the inscription. 

" He wore the costume at a birthday party/' said 
the mother. " How happy he was, and how proud 
we were of him ! This book was a family secret 
while he was with us. We enjoyed making addi- 
tions to it, as a botanist delights to sketch the 
gradual unfolding of a rare plant. Every child is a 
unique to the parents, you know. We said to each 
other that, in years to come, he, as a man— perhaps 
his wife and children — would prize this picture-his- 
tory of his life. Now — -we seldom show it ; but 
you can understand." 

The answer was slow in coming and reluctantly 
uttered : 

" We have no picture of our son. Very young 
children alter so rapidly that we thought it hardly 
worth while to have him photographed as a baby. 



Photographi?ig the Baby. yy 

Afterward it was postponed from time to time — I 
hardly know why. Such things get the go-by in a 
family where all are busy. 'Any time ' is too apt 
in these cases to mean ' Never ! ' " 

The gentle matron whose book was the prettiest 
of " family secrets" had no thought of commend- 
ing it as an example for the imitation of others. 
Without her knowledge I take the liberty of making 
it known as worthy to be admired and copied. 

The photograph of Baby's nascent features, the 
bald and, but for the rest at the back, bobbing 
head, the blank trail of exaggerated skirts, are inter- 
esting to few except the doting mother. To the 
casual visitor the exhibition of the treasure is a 
bore, and, when the strong necessity is bound upon 
him of complimenting it, a horror. Keep family- 
portraits of all kinds out of the drawing-room. 
They belong to the Innermost of your life, to the 
sweet, and to indifferent ears, the silent side of 
parent-nature. 

To one who does not comprehend the difficulties 
of making Baby ready for the momentous business 
of ''sitting for his picture " — the choice of a day 
when the weather is entirely propitious, the nice 
adjustment of mamma's convenience to the pho- 
tographer's engagements, and numberless minor 



yS Photographing the Baby. 

stumbling-blocks that justify the delay of what can 
be attended to next week as well as to-day — it 
seems passing strange that a duty so simple and 
important should be so often and (as is sometimes 
proved by the sequel) so cruelly neglected. 

Apart from the obvious sentimental reason with 
which we have been dealing, why parents cannot 
afford to let the days and months slip by without 
having their little one photographed, there is a 
more occult and scientific value in a pictured record 
of progressive child-life. The sun is an unflattering 
reporter. The advance in intelligence and in the 
healthful development which is beauty of the best 
kind to the eye of science, or the gradual retro- 
gression in either or both, may escape the eye of 
persons who are in constant association with the 
subject of the subtle change. Comparison of the 
sun-portrait of to-day with one taken a year or eigh- 
teen months ago will reveal the change to the intel- 
ligent observer. In some instances the stealthy 
advance of disease has been announced to those 
most interested in the victim's welfare by the shock 
of discerning a new expression in the eye ; in not- 
ing the altered contour of the face and lines of pain 
or languor which have been transferred to the sen- 
sitive plate. As faithfully it betrays the slight 



Photographing the Baby. 79 

obliquity of vision, the habitual scowl, the truth 
that one shoulder is higher than the other, or that 
an inclination to stoop is narrowing the chest. 

In the list of practical suggestions as to the 
method of preparing Baby for what is, but need not 
be, an ordeal to parent and child, we set down first : 

Do not dress him elaborately. Embroidery goes 
for nothing in the finished picture ; a broad sash is 
a blemish ; the finest lace on sleeves, waist, and 
skirt becomes only a ragged edge, neither elegant 
nor picturesque. Children, being in a state of im- 
mature civilization, detest best clothes. By the 
time your cherub is inducted into his costliest robe 
and corresponding appurtenances he is uncomfort- 
able and sour of humor. Slip on a plain frock, such 
as he wears every day, and do not be critical as to 
orderly draperies when you have surrendered him 
to the artist. 

A New York artist who is justly celebrated for 
his skill in producing natural and exquisite photo- 
graphs of babies, lets them roll on the floor, sit, or 
lie at ease in carriage or cradle, and objects, unless 
a picture of the head and bust only is desired, to 
strapping the poor little beings in the high seat 
which is to their seniors a mildly-reminiscent edition 
of dental fl operations. " 



80 Photographing the Baby. 

Second — Allow yourself plenty of time on the 
day set aside for the expedition. When it is possi- 
ble, make an engagement for an hour when the 
morning nap is over and Baby has had a satisfac- 
tory meal. A hungry, tired, or sleepy infant is an 
impracticable subject, let the operator be never so 
skilful, and endowed with abundance of the tact 
which is almost as essential to success as knowledge 
of his art. Take an earlier train or street-car, or 
order your carriage sooner than is necessary to 
land you and your charge at the gallery in season 
to claim your " turn." Give yourself leisure for 
divesting Baby of out-door wraps, and him the op- 
portunity to make himself at home in his strange 
quarters. If he is a bright child his nervous balance 
is easily shaken. The sprightliness which is the 
spring of his fascinations renders him susceptible to 
extraneous influences. With the perverse deter- 
mination not to appear at his best on occasion and 
to order, w r hich is bound up in the heart of even 
the model baby, he resents the liberty taken with 
his precious person, refuses to pose angelically, and 
conceives at sight a deadly animosity to the artist 
and his assistants. Cheat him into the belief that 
he is master of the situation and premises ; that the 
sky-lighted attic is an extension of his nursery 



Photographing the Baby. 81 

bounds, the human tenants his obedient servants. 
When he is quite at ease and his unconscious self 
again, get him in front of the camera without a 
word of formal preparation. All this requires 
thought and patience, but it is worth what it costs. 

Third — Have Baby's first likeness taken by the 
time lie can hold up his head and open his eyes pur- 
posefully. 

" As soon as he begins to smile," says our artist 
succinctly. 

The pictured nose will be a button, the mouth 
imbecile, the eyes will be blank wells overhung by 
puffy lids ; but the photograph must look like our 
Baby, and therefore exceed in value a portrait by 
Titian or Vandyke. 

Have another taken six months later, and at the 
close of the year a third. After Baby acquires 
such individuality — having, so to speak, gone into 
features on his own account — that acquaintances 
recognize him in your house and keeping, while 
papa would know him in the street without the 
corroborative evidence of the nurse's companion- 
ship and the sight of the carriage bought by him- 
self, an annual visit to the photographer is suffi- 
cient. This should be paid regularly for ten years 
at least, 

4* 



THE BABY THAT MUST GO TO THE 
COUNTRY. 




DISTINGUISHED physician, who 
speaks with well-earned authority on the 
subject of children's diseases, stoutly com- 
bats the popular theory that the second 
summer of an infant's existence is fraught with pe- 
culiar perils. " It is a critical period in child-life, " 
he acknowledges. " But so is the first summer, and 
every other ! " 

His position is supported by a body of statistics 
that staggers the sceptic and reduces to superstitious 
mutterings the baleful warning that smites the 
young mother's ear like a knell at the height of her 
exultation in the exceptional health of her first- 
born : 

" Ah ! wait until he has weathered his second 
summer before you count too much on rearing 
him." 

From my much lower plane of observation I have 
for years collected data which go to prove that June 



The Baby that must go to the Country. 83 

heats are more trying to babies than those of the 
hotter second and third months of what is recog- 
nized as " settled hot weather." In some of the 
Middle States cities and in a larger number of 
Southern towns the average mortality among infants 
in June is greater than in any other month of the 
year, September standing next in this bad emi- 
nence. June suns have not the clear, honest blaze 
of July or the steady fervor of August dog-days, 
but a slow sullenness all their own, except as Sep- 
tember casts back the bodeful glow. 

The summer has leaped upon us like a ravening 
tiger. The " long, rainy season in May," in open- 
ing the pores of the earth and flushing the mains of 
trunk and bough with sap, has enervated the human 
frame. The earliest of the "warm-water days," 
when the atmosphere is murky and clings to flesh 
and lungs like wet wool, have robbed muscles of 
strength and left no soundness of nerve in us. Di- 
gestion adjusts itself languidly to food common 
sense bids us take, the while appetite cries out 
against the consumption as an outrage. 

Under these conditions the city baby changes 
visibly, and, to the apprehension of the inexperi- 
enced mother, mysteriously. The flaccidity of mus- 
cles, which let the pretty head droop and sway like 



84 The Baby that must go to the Country. 

a withering flower-bell, is the outward indication of 
the relaxation of inward organs. His lungs labor 
in receiving the still, hot air. To assuage unwonted 
thirst he takes liquid nourishment eagerly, and the 
demoralized stomach rejects it unassimilated. His 
complexion is chalky, eyes dull and heavy, or un- 
naturally clear and large. These phenomena and 
others more alarming are attributed by mother and 
nurse to the ubiquitous teeth. There is never a 
day, from the moment the nursling begins to thrust 
his fist into his watering mouth — betokening, the 
wise matrons tells the maternal novice, that " the 
teeth are taking root in the bottom of the gums" — 
to that on which the last deciduous incisor has re- 
signed in favor of a (< permanency/' when Baby's 
masticating apparatus is not credited with some 
disorder, physical or moral, of the much-enduring 
possessor. If to this bugbear be superadded im- 
pending dreads of " the terrible second summer/' 
the mother's soul is racked with nameless fears and 
positive forebodings. She vitiates the quality of 
her child's natural aliment by fretting and insomnia, 
or, if he be a " bottle-baby," changes the milk once 
and again, and tries various much-advertised sub- 
stitutes, in hope of hitting upon something that can 
be taken care of by the gastric juices. 



The Baby that must go to the Country. 85 

Occasionally her experiments in the latter direc- 
tion appear to be crowned with a measure of suc- 
cess. Regularity is restored to bodily functions, 
color and animation return to the countenance, and 
this or that celebrated Artificiality, warranted to be 
an immense improvement upon mother's milk, gets 
the credit of the cure ; whereas it is the greatest- 
hearted, sweetest-tempered of Mothers who has 
come to the relief of the enfeebled infant. 

Oftener Baby " runs down" perceptibly from 
day to day. Indigestion is succeeded by emacia- 
tion in a frightfully brief period ; the bluish-white 
tinge that menaces fatal collapse settles about nose 
and mouth. The sensible physician, too frequently 
summoned only when domestic practice is demon- 
strated to be disastrous failure, speaks out strongly. 
Instant change of air and place is demanded. 
This is not a case for medicine or tentative treat- 
ment. 

11 But it is impossible for us to leave town before 
next week," said one mother when this verdict was 
rendered. " Furniture must be covered, servants 
dismissed, and" — laughing nervously— " I must 
have a travelling-dress. We never leave the city 
before the 1st of July." 

"This child must leave town without an hour's 



86. The Baby that must go to the Country. 

delay, " reiterated the dictator. " To-morrow may 
be too late." 

In three hours the infant, in an apparently dying 
condition, was laid on a pillow in the mother's lap 
as she sat in an easy-rolling phaeton ; the father 
took the reins, and they drove out of the city by 
the nearest route, slowly and with careful avoidance 
of noisy streets and rough pavements. For the 
little one's short battle for life seemed over. The 
eyes were half-open, but the iris was invisible under 
the drooping lid ; the extremities were cold, the 
features set in waxen rigidity. There was no 
longer room for paltering with the awful issue. 
Stopping half a dozen times in as many miles to 
pour a few drops of nourishment between the poor, 
pale lips, now and then leaning anear to them in 
agonized suspense to learn if the last sigh had in- 
deed fluttered through, the parents reached a hill 
farmstead and established their charge in an airy 
upper chamber. In twelve hours a change for the 
better was evident ; in three days the danger was 
passed. 

This true story has a replication, with varia- 
tions, in the experience of almost every mother 
to whom many children have been born. By 
and by she remembers the catholicon for herself 



The Baby that must go to the Country. 87 

and does not await the more alarming stage of 
the decline. 

Suffer a word or two in passing as to the position 
of the family practitioner when the one to whom he 
is required to minister is the precious youngling 
of the flock. An immensity of cheap twaddle is 
vented upon the medical profession, usually in the 
line of witless or cruel sobriquets, all bearing tow- 
ard the truth which no one admits more frankly 
than medical men — to wit, that drugs, in and of 
themselves, cure nothing and nobody — and illus- 
trating the falsehood that doctors physic people for 
the love of dosing, and because they do not know 
what else to do when they are sent for. 

Instead of asking your intelligent and sympathiz- 
ing doctor " what Baby ought to take," plead with 
him not to be wrought upon by your fears and his 
compassion into giving what may be termed a 
" maternal placebo" — i.e., a preparation, ineffective 
for good or evil, to quiet your nerves with the im- 
pression that he is a man of prompt measures, 
while he is really trying to soothe you into the 
right frame of mind to receive his true prescription. 
Plead with him, instead, to advise you how to get 
the darling w r ell without alterative poisons. Ninety 
physicians out of every hundred regular practi- 



88 The Baby that must go to the Country. 

tioners will repay such confidence with frankness, 
and tell you how infinitely better is skilful nursing 
than the expensive wares sold by apothecaries, who 
grow rich upon the sick man's unreason and Ga- 
len's acquiescence in the same. 

Yet it is proverbial that neither the restored pa- 
tient nor his friends are content to pay the bill of 
the doctor who has been so simple or so intrepid 
as to declare that the case stands in no need of 
medicine, only of wise care, diet, rest, or perhaps, 
and most likely, of change of air. 

Some babies must go out of town, or out of life. 
Without pushing the decision to the alternative, 
let the mother be heedful of the indications that 
early or late summer heats are undermining the 
magazine of vital strength in her infant's system. 
Where there are very young children in a family it 
is well so to order the affairs of the domestic camp 
that sudden marching orders can be obeyed with- 
out serious inconvenience. When the hegira of 
mamma and Baby cannot be accomplished without 
discomfort to others, count the cost (quickly) and 
take the risks courageously. Better annoyance to 
children of a larger growth, to society, friends, hus- 
band — even to the impedimenta, incubus, idol, 
fetich of the American housekeeper, known com- 



The Baby that must go to the Country. 89 

prehensively as THE HOUSE — than peril to the ex- 
istence of your choicest treasure and a store of un- 
availing remorse for yourself. Faith in the one 
panacea for fleshly ills is yearly becoming more 
nearly universal. For your baby it is a very 
miracle of healing. He has a prescriptive birth- 
right in the benefits to be drawn from ocean- 
breezes or milder airs that have gathered balm 
from resinous forests, oxygen (" which is the life") 
from miles of green fields, freshness from mountain- 
brow and leaping stream. 

Leave embroideries and laces behind you as you 
escape to the mountain or seaside. Have plenty 
of loose slips and light flannels, w r ide shoes and 
stout stockings. Throw solicitude for Baby's com- 
plexion to the winds which are to renerve his whole 
body ; wink at grass-stains and soiled fingers. So 
long as the direct rays of noontide do not beat 
upon his head, and he is not exposed to damp 
draughts, do not fear to grant him an abundance of 
what you have brought him to the country to get 
— pure, sun-warmed, living, Heaven-given and 
Heaven-blessed AIR. 



THE BABY THAT MUST STAY IN TOWN. 



*ME 



OWEVER merry in seeming may be the 
mention of one's self as belonging to the 
" Can't-get-away Club," there is always 
a pathetic suggestion in it, even if the 
"member" be grown man or woman. When the 
unwritten register of the Club includes, it may 
be, six score, or six thousand, or, as in threatened 
Nineveh, six score thousand persons that cannot 
discern between their right hand and their left 
hand, heartache and grave forebodings come with 
the knowledge that these things are and must 
needs be. 

It may be that, as Dr. Holmes sets forth in " El- 
sie Venner," certain conditions of city life and 
breeding produce one of the finest types of healthy 
girlhood. But the rule holds firm that, as surely 
as plants which have thriven in the hot-house all 
winter sicken unless removed into the open air 
when summer is abroad upon the earth, young and 



77ie Baby that mzist Stay in Town. 91 

growing human beings are the healthier — " make 
better wood " — for a corresponding change of influ- 
ences during the warm months. 

My premise is not discouragement, but an incen- 
tive to make the best of the " must-be." A cruel ne- 
cessity the tender mother considers it, but one which 
is altogether beyond her control, let the cause be ill- 
ness, or straightened finances, or peculiar business 
entanglements on the part of the elders of the 
household, or any other of a dozen contretemps that 
make her, and consequently Baby, fixtures, while 
everybody else has fled as from a plague-infected 
region. This "everybody else," by the way, be- 
comes a less comprehensive term than appears at 
first sight, when one meets at early morning and 
sunsetting the hosts of tenanted perambulators and 
toddling weanlings that beautify and enliven our 
city parks. 

The rule of faith and practice in the town nursery 
which is not shut up and deserted during il solstitial 
summer's heat," is simple : Since Baby cannot go 
to the country, all- of the country that is transporta- 
ble must be brought to Baby. 

To begin with the spaciousness which would be 
to him a greater charm than to you who are accus- 
tomed to gird yourself and walk whither you will — 



92 The Baby that must Stay in Town. 

the liberty of range and romp : Throw open to him 
the whole interior of the home of which he has, per- 
haps, up to date, known little beyond his nursery 
and your bed-room. Your fashionable and fortu- 
nate friends have shrouded furniture, pictures, and 
chandeliers in holland and tarlatan ; taken down 
and packed away portieres ; rugs are rolled into 
corners, and beaten carpets are sewed up in sacking 
or covered with crash. If yours are show drawing- 
rooms, imitate the example thus far of these nota- 
ble housekeepers. Clear decks and reef sails — that 
is, put by hot woollen floor-coverings that gather 
dust and foster the larvae of moth and carpet-beetle. 
If you cannot afford to lay down cleanly and fra- 
grant matting, leave the boards bare and keep 
them well swept and dusted. Curtains exclude the 
breeze and their folds protect insect-pests. Do 
away with them wherever they can be spared. If 
fly-doors and mosquito-bars are needed, let them 
be removed in the twice-renewed freshness of the 
day — the breathing-spell that lasts from dawn to 
breakfast-time, and from eight o'clock until eleven 
P.M. In these blessed seasons of refreshing invite 
all the air to enter and wander through your house 
that can be beguiled into wide windows. Take this 
time in the morning for airing beds and clothing, and 



The Baby that 7nust Stay hi Town. 93 

beating out flies. Nettings and blinds will, when 
restored to their places, imprison all that is worth 
having in the average " dog-day." 

In the territory made void by pushing back 
larger articles of furniture and storing bric-a-brac 
in pantry and drawer, let Baby have leave to gam- 
bol while it is too hot for him to venture out-of- 
doors. Dress him lightly in a linen or print slip 
which cannot be injured by rolling and creeping on 
the floor. If he cannot walk, spread a comfortable 
on the boards or matting and surround him with 
his toys. The roominess, the cool shade of bowed 
shutters, the sense of change and lawlessness, will 
be a faint foretaste of future joys on orchard-turf 
beneath bending branches " fruited deep." I know 
of no better use to which two fair-sized parlors can 
be put, at a season when " nobody makes calls," 
than to be converted into a temporary nursery, at 
least during the day-time. 

Should a big sister protest, or mamma not see 
her way clear to this violation of the proprieties, 
appropriate two- upper chambers to our Baby, 
always choosing those in which he is not accus- 
tomed to stay. He wants change for the eye as 
much as diversion of mind. It would be well to 
give him a new sleeping-room also. Why salutary 



94 The Baby that must Stay in Town. 

effects should follow such shifting of quarters, when 
all sides of a dwelling seem to be equally pleasant 
and healthful, is but one of hundreds of recondite 
agencies connected with sanitary science that are 
acknowledged without being understood. Re- 
double, quadruple your care as to the quality of 
Baby's food, your watchfulness of the results of his 
diet, when you cannot give him country air and 
milk fresh from one cow. Get a lactometer and 
use it daily. No amount of pains and time is 
better bestowed than that spent in a successful at- 
tempt to secure a supply of pure, unwatered milk 
for a nursling. Watch continually for indications 
that his food distresses him or is not nourishing life 
and growth as it should, and be ready with correc- 
tive or wholesome variety. Guard against over- 
feeding while his system is relaxed by heat, and 
letting him eat at all when he is in a profuse per- 
spiration and tired out after exercise. Take him 
on your lap, loosen and shake his clothes, sponge 
his face, neck, and hands with cool — not cold — 
water, wipe them lightly with soft linen, and fan 
him gently, talking cheerfully to distract his atten- 
tion from present discomfort, until the temperature 
of the body is natural. The stomach sympathizes 
with nervous excitement and exhaustion. 



The Baby that must Stay in Town, 95 

As soon as milk is brought into the house put it 
into a glass or glazed earthenware vessel, set it on 
the ice, and keep it there, taking cup or bottle to 
the refrigerator to be filled, instead of bringing the 
milk into a warm room. Should it relax the bowels 
too much, boil it, strain it through coarse muslin to 
get rid of the skin formed by cooking, and when 
cool put it on the ice. " Made foods," such as 
porridge, gruel, and the like, should be kept in 
the refrigerator until needed. 

Put Baby to sleep in another room than that he 
occupies by day, and let the dormitory be dark 
and freshly aired when he is laid to rest. One gas- 
light, kept burning while you undress and bathe 
him, will exhaust the oxygen of a small chamber 
for the night. Regard him as — we will say for the 
sake of illustration — a clover-blossom, and grant 
him absolute quiet, coolness, and grateful gloom. 
Set his crib out of the draught, or interpose a 
screen between him and the open window 7 , no mat- 
ter how hot the night. Almost as many colds are 
contracted in summer as in winter, and nine- 
tenths of them from standing, sitting, or worse 
than either, sleeping in the current flowing from 
one open door or window to another. It is always 
and everywhere dangerou?. While it is hardly 



96 The Baby that must Stay in Town. 

safe for Baby to sleep without a gauze flannel shirt, 
it should not be the one he has worn all day. The 
night-clothes must be dry, clean, and sweet, and as 
light as is consistent with safety. The small body 
loses weight and also strength in the drain of heavy 
nocturnal perspiration. Like other machines of ex- 
quisitely-delicate manufacture, the balance of this 
is liable to be disturbed by extremes of heat and 
cold, and in the nice process of regulation you 
must be nature's dutiful assistant. 

However comfortable and contented you make 
your charge at home, consider all your successes 
but substitutional to the outdoor-life which the hu- 
man plant should enjoy at this season. Now, if 
ever, Baby's " outings" ought to be the most im- 
perative of domestic regulations. Let the nurse's 
breakfast precede yours, if she cannot else get him 
abroad before the sun has drunk up the scanty 
dewfall vouchsafed to urban garden and parklet. 
If she cannot be spared at that hour, take her in- 
door tasks upon yourself rather than rob your child 
of what he can get in no other way. 

If — as is the case with a majority of the Club — 
you keep but one (nominal) serving-woman, and 
she cannot be prevailed upon to "lave her work 
all standm' in the flure to tend a babby in the 



The Baby that must Stay in Town, gj 

morninV' postpone the share of household toil 
that falls on your shoulders to a less convenient 
season, take an early breakfast, and, arrayed in 
lawn, percale, or modest gingham, brave public 
opinion by "tending " your darling in person. If 
he can totter along holding to your finger, the 
business is not formidable. There are usually 
parks or boulevards accessible in a short time by 
street-cars ; perhaps one where the grass is not 
"forbidden" for six days in the week, where, 
seated at your ease on a bench, you may draw in 
renewal of strength, patience, and hope for yourself 
while watching the uncertain progress of the tiny feet 
over the sward, the delight in motion, fresh air, and 
freedom he shares with city sparrows and pigeons. 

To wheel a perambulator is a genuine, I had al- 
most said a crucial, test of your moral courage and 
innate ladyhood. If not superior to the prick of 
false pride, stimulate maternal devotion into hero- 
ism that shall tread it under foot. 

There is a pretty little song, now out of fashion, 
beginning : 

" Mrs. Lofty keeps her carriage ; 
So do I ! " 

that sets forth the difference between you, trund- 
ling your jewel-casket along the sidewalk, and your 
5 



98 The Baby that must Stay in Town. 

purse-proud neighbor, bespattering you with mud 
from newly watered streets as her chariot whirls 
by. 

Mrs. Postlethwaite, who stays in town this sum- 
mer in order that dear Oscar may get his affairs in 
train to go abroad with her in October, takes her 
pug for an airing at the same hour you choose for 
your Prince's constitutional. A beauty of a pug, 
of leonine hide, hyacinthine tail, nose like a sooty 
pot for blackness, and a vicious scowl between two 
red eyes. He does not deign to salute Baby, who 
crows out as the "beauty" trots by. Nor does 
his mistress see Baby's mother, who, if she be 
philosophical, will smile, not sigh, at the slight. 
Why not, when she knows that the extremest tip 
of Baby's pink finger is worth more than all the 
pugs imported into America since the foreign folly 
became one of our easily excited " rages ? " v 

Have a stated hour for Baby's return from the 
morning and afternoon expeditions. He must not 
be overheated in the one, nor chilled by the other. 
Mid-day nap and nightly slumbers will be more 
profound and healthful for both. 




A SABBATH-TWILIGHT TALK WITH 
"MAMMA." 




ROM a letter that lies before me I make an 
abstract : 

" I take it for granted that you agree with me 
in believing it well to give young children no religious in- 
struction, in the received acceptation of the expression. I 
teach mine to speak the truth, to be kind, just, and loving to 
all, and then leave everything pertaining to creed, doctrine, 
and the future life to be decided by themselves as they at- 
tain to riper judgment. I will not hamper volition by dogmas 
or bind the wings of thought by forms. " 

Analogy is not argument, nor illustration proof, 
but will my stranger correspondent forgive me for 
introducing both in the first paragraph of a reply 
to an epistle that bears in every line token of 
womanly feeling and unusual depth of thought ? 

Many years ago, chancing to pass a summer on 
a farm where a well was in digging, I filled a box 
with earth just brought up from a depth of twenty 



ioo A Sabbath- Twilight Talk. 

feet, covered it with glass and set it in the sun. 
The experiment was suggested by a story I had 
read of the resurrection of seed " buried long in 
dust," which had underlain the turf by forty feet of 
clayey, silicious, and Lyell only knows what other 
kinds of strata. In the course of a week green 
sprouts pierced the yellow earth under the glass, 
leaves unfolded to hide its bareness. The impro- 
vised Wardian case was not lifted during their de- 
velopment. The moisture arising from the damp 
mould condensed on the lower side of the pane by 
day and was precipitated by night. 

Yet this soil, which should have been virgin or 
fraught with the floral wealth of two thousand years 
ago, brought forth weeds ; not fantastic strangers, 
but the vulgar pests that curse our fields to-day — ■ 
lamb's quarter, mullein, sorrel, rag-weed ! Doubts 
of the spontaneity of evil have seldom visited me 
since the disgust of that discovery. 

Unhappily for the successful operation of the 
theory advanced by my correspondent, a child's 
mind is never a fallow blank for one waking minute 
after consciousness of thought begins. Yet more, 
unhappily, tares grow apace. Even when good 
seed are cast into good ground the pestilent vulga- 
rians must be pulled up again and again, until the 



A Sabbath- Twilight Talk. 101 

full corn in the ear cannot be harmed by their en- 
croachment. 

The inference is not to be evaded. Just so surely 
as two things cannot occupy the same space at the 
same time, the bad will not be kept out of heart and 
mind except by the expulsive power of the good. 
The child does not " speak the truth," is not " kind, 
just, and loving to all" from an abstract principle 
of right. He obeys Mamma through love or fear. 
Until he begins to reason for himself, this motive- 
power may guide his outward behavior aright. 
Before he ceases to be an infant a stouter stanchion 
is needed in the rising fabric of character and habit. 
If parental influence is to supply this, the parent 
must be perfect in his child's eyes. The first rec- 
ognition of fallibility weakens the prop. 

The mother's task would be measurably lightened 
could she keep her charge under a moral Wardian 
case, which none but herself should raise by so much 
as a quarter inch. Lightened for the time only. 
My subterranean weeds withered and perished, I 
recollect, the very day I withdrew the cover and 
let in the external air. Cellared plants are luxuri- 
ant, succulent — and sickly — when brought out of 
the vault. The child who is not allowed to asso- 
ciate with others of his own age and kind, if he 



102 A Sabbath- Twilight Talk. 

escape the alternative of selfish priggishness, is a 
sensitive plant in a hail-storm in the subsequent 
introduction to the society of school-room and play- 
ground. Sooner or later he must learn " to rough 
it," to take life as he finds it, not as his mother has 
painted it. The training which does not beget innate 
strength is of as little value as mental or physical 
cramming which does not involve assimilation. 

Every mother has thrust upon her at some point 
of her experience the appalling truth that babies 
learn to do evil more readily than to do well. The 
unseemly grimace, the unneat habit, the slang or 
profane word — are caught up with alacrity, some- 
times with gusto that stagger those of us who will 
not believe in total depravity if we can help it. I 
essay no other explanation of the dark facts. My 
appeal for the support of the assertion that wrong 
comes more naturally than right to fallen human 
nature is to those who have most occasion to know 
and to lament it. 

As a precious drop of cheer, we may add that 
there is in every baby an element of devoutness 
which can no more be ignored than the truth just 
set down in sadness. No commentator has ever 
fully interpreted the beautiful mystery wrapped up 
in the Master's declaration : 



A Sabbath- Twilight Talk. 103 

u For I say unto you , Their angels do always be- 
hold the face of my Father which is in heaven" 

The mother, talking with her little one of the 
Better Land, of the Father's care, and the love of 
Him who, as the baby-voice sings : 

" died, 
Heaven's gates to open wide," 

perceives, and is moved to awe in beholding, that 
what is faith in her is with him sight. She sees 
through a glass darkly ; his eyes are as clear and 
fearless as a young seraph's. The guiding Eye, the 
sustaining Hand, the Happy Home, the shining 
ones who are sent to guard him while sleeping — 
are as real and comforting as the present facts of 
his earthly home and the love that surrounds him 
there. 

Hearing the sound of voices in my nursery one 
evening, I went up softly to the door. The then 
baby was entreating the nurse, who had come in to 
seek a missing article, to open the window, put out 
the light, and " hurry down stairs so's the dear 
white angels can come in and stand by Baby's crib 
while she is asleep. ,, 

Waiting without and unseen until her request 
was granted, I saw the small lady nestle among her 



104 A Sabbath- Twilight Talk. 

pillows with a satisfied coo, her face to the window 
through which the stars looked at her, and fall 
asleep in such bliss of content that I comprehended, 
as never before, other words of the Divine Man : 

' ' Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of 
God as a little child, lie shall in nowise enter 
therein.'' 

The child who is taught elementary morality 
and nothing of the source of " whatsoever things 
are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatso- 
ever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report — " may be a 
pleasant little pagan. But he is defrauded of the 
knowledge of his rights in the Father's love, his 
heirship to the kingdom. If his earthly father were 
in a far country toward which the baby and mother 
were journeying, how frequent and fond would be 
their talk of him and their new home, how anxious 
the desire of the mother that the boy should con- 
form in all things to what his father's son should 
be, so that the final meeting might be in fulness of 
joy and not in disappointment ! 

This is not " dogma," but solemn analogy, that 
holds good in every section. 

If parental vigilance cannot keep a child from 
knowledge of evil in his tenderest years, it is more 



A Sabbath-Twilight Talk. 105 

impotent to defend him from actual sin as he ad- 
vances in life. The " must-be " of " offences " is 
inexorable. The mother who, with line upon line 
and precept upon precept, weaves into the very 
fibre of her babe's conscience belief of the Omnis- 
cient Friend who is wounded by his wrong-doing, 
provides him with armor of proof for the day of 
battle. 

" How can I do this great wickedness and sin 
against God 7 " cried the Jewish boy, a captive in a 
heathen land, unguarded save by the piety learned 
at his father's knee. 

This consciousness and this fear are the true and 
only aegis for tempted humanity, always and every- 
where. From age to age, the ring of the shield 
when struck is the same. 

A merry, romping four-year-old, who had not 
one trait or trick of the " goody " phenomenon, 
was pressed at a neighbor's tea-table to take a 
second slice of cake. 

u Mamma told me when I came from home not 
to eat more than one piece," she answered, with- 
drawing her wistful gaze from the cake-basket. 

The host laid a slice on her plate. 

"It wont hurt you, dear, and we will not tell 
Mamma," 



io6 A Sabbath- Twilight Talk, 



&' 



The great, grave eyes were full of surprise as she 
looked straight at him. 

" GOD would know ! M she said simply. 

She was not confused in her ideas of sin per se 
and expediency. To disobey her mother was sin 
against GOD. The life to which this line and plum- 
met are continually applied must run in harmonious 
parallels with the Divine Will. 

The hymns, the texts, the prayers said at the 
mother's dictation, the sweet, inimitable old Bible 
stories told in Sabbath twilights, abide forever with 
us. It was not they that made irksome the Puritan 
Sabbath at which it is the fashion to rail. The 
"children's hour" of the rest-day should be for 
mother and little ones the most blessed of the week. 
It is, by eminence, her Opportunity. 

A mother says : 

" When my children were babies the care of them 
devolved upon me on Sunday evening while the 
nurse was at church. From inclination, rather than 
a sense of duty, I filled the hour preceding their 
bedtime with Bible stories, encouraged them to 
ask questions suggested by the recitations, and sang 
hymns to and with them. The thought that the 
exercise made the Sabbath a delight to them did 
not occur to me until my first-born, then just four 



A Sabbath- Twilight Talk. 107 

years old, threw his arms about my neck as I kissed 
him in his crib one night, with : 

" ' O, Mamma ! how I wish all my Mondays were 
Sundays!'" 

So few of our many, many Mondays, dear sister 
and reader, bear any likeness to the faintest after- 
glow of the Best Day of the Seven that we cannot 
afford to let slip the chances of setting the " Sunday 
evenings with Mamma " high on the mount of 
childish privilege. In this, the closing and most 
familiar of our " Talks," I have not been able to 
withhold a few words on this most vital subject. 
Words, not from author or editor,- but from the 
woman's heart to the hearts and consciences of other 
mothers. The brooding love that guards cradle and 
crib is stayed on the threshold of the father's house. 
To the boys and girls grown into men and women, 
Childhood's Home is a light-house on the shore of 
the ocean over which each must sail his craft for 
himself. 

Now — I write it reverently — " is our accepted 
time." We work for time, and we do well. Wisest 
is she who appreciates that every moulding touch, 
each repression of evil disposition, each strengthen- 
ing of good is done for the Hereafter of which this 
existence is but the narrow porch. 



NURSERY COOKERY. 



"HOW DO YOU FEED HIM?" 




NE hundred years ago the question as to 
the source whence the baby drew his 
daily food was one rarely propounded 
by our foremothers. Objections to the 
almost universal practice of nursing one's offspring 
on the score of inconvenience, injury to a slender 
figure, confinement to the house by day, or loss of 
sleep at night, were retailed as traditionary scandals. 
Physical inability to fulfil this parental obligation 
was deplored as a misfortune by the mother and 
mentioned by her gossips in the category of dis- 
eases. 

Custom, inherited weaknesses — which are too 
often the results of excessive labor or imprudence 
on the part of these very foremothers — and perhaps 
climatic influences, have changed this in great 
measure. The query, "How do you feed him?" 
is conventional. The answer no longer involves 
the child's chances of strength and life. 



H2 "How do You Feed Him?" 

The fashionable nurse maintains a position of 
diplomatic neutrality on the subject, susceptible 
alike to the interesting patient's regrets that with 
her constitution it will be impossible for her to do 
justice to the dear lamb, and the conviction that it 
may be better for both that she should not attempt 
the role of w r et-nurse ; and, on the other hand, to 
the father's private proffer of a handsome bribe to 
be dropped into Mrs. Gamp's apron when " a full 
head of milk " shall be assured. Paterfamilias is a 
practical man with no nonsense about him, accord- 
ing to his own showing. His mother nursed 
twelve, and lived to be eighty years old. She was 
a woman, and so is Materfamilias. A smattering 
of physiological lore and a modicum of observation 
tell him that perseverance in a certain regimen will 
effect marvels in this respect ; also that the day is 
usually won or lost by the end of baby's first moon 
of acknowledged existence. 

Before entering upon the vital subject of nursery 
cookery, let us lay down the distinct declaration 
that, except in cases of positive disease in the 
mother, her child can have no nourishment compar- 
able to that supplied by her own bosom. Assim- 
ilation of this by gastric organs, blood, brain, and 
nerves, is a perfectly natural process. 



"How do You Feed Him?' 1 113 

" Man (as we are opening our eyes to see) must 
eat meat to enrich his blood. He should likewise 
temper blood-heats with fruits and other esculents ; 
strengthen brain-tissue and muscle with the phos- 
phates of fish and crude cereals. A cunning distil- 
lation of all these elements is in the human mother's 
milk. He who created woman and knows what is 
in her, ordained this for the nourishment and up- 
building of the human infant." * 

This axiomatic deliverance will not be questioned 
save by a violently prejudiced person, or an igno- 
ramus. Equally patent is the truth that no substi- 
tute, however skilfully compounded, can be de- 
pended upon when the child who throve upon it in 
health falls ill. The mute eloquence of statistics 
of the comparative mortality of nurslings and 
"bottle-babies" is unanswerable, and ought to 
gainsay all arguments of expediency, indolence, and 
vanity. The mother who has never fed her child 
from the wholesome fount that springs hard by her 
heart is to be pitied, not congratulated. 

Next to the nutriment supplied by the human 
being of the mother-sex, we rate that offered by 
the graminivorous cow. Better, in most cases, than 
all the compositions manufactured and advertised 

* Eve's Daughters, p. 22. 



H4 "How do You Feed Him?" 

wholesale by emulous benefactors of our race, is a 
simple preparation within the reach of the poorest 
cottager — two-thirds milk, one-third boiling water, 
slightly sweetened, and administered, a little more 
than blood-warm, to the infant. Chemically and 
practically, this most nearly approximates mother's 
milk in constituent properties and effect — given 
three conditions : 

First. The milk must be pure, sweet, not more 
than twelve hours old, and unskimmed. 

Second. The water must be boiling hot, and 
mixed in just proportion with the milk. 

Third. One even teaspoonful of white sugar to 
a generous half-pint of the liquid makes it quite 
sweet enough. 

With regard to the last-named stipulation, mothers 
and nurses seem to hold the same opinion as did 
Mistress Elizabeth Welch when the Father of his 
Country pleaded for less molasses in the second 
cup of coffee she poured out for him. " If it was 
all molasses it would be none too good for your 
excellency ! " 

That over-sweetened " cambric-tea " is thin 
syrup, that syrup ferments into acid at a certain 
temperature, that the coat of baby's stomach is 
almost as delicate as the membrane lining the eye- 



"How do You Feed Him?" 115 

lid — are truisms no tolerably intelligent person 
should need to have reiterated. That the taste for 
sweets common to children is more a matter of edu- 
cation than nature is probably as little considered 
as the fact that the appetite thus formed and fos- 
tered is rapidly vitiated into fierce craving. The 
three-year old lusts for the saccharine matter that 
titillates his palate into thirst as did the Hebrew 
desert-wanderer for flesh. Mamma's taste would 
revolt at the sugary mess she pours down the throat 
of the little one, who at an astonishingly early age 
learns to refuse it with wrathful yells if not up to 
the regulation-standard of cloyment. 

The temperature of Baby's food is a point much 
neglected even by those who pay fancy prices for 
one cow's milk, and buy and use lactometers. In- 
deed, there is a growing tendency tow r ard the be- 
lief that milk w T hen raw and cold is as digestible as 
when partially cooked, and when pure more nutri- 
tious than if diluted with water. I have known 
monthly nurses who expatiated to attentive young 
mothers upon the convenience of using it in the 
crude state, representing that " the babies like it 
just as well when they get used to it." A cupful 
of any cold liquid taken into the empty stomach 
checks digestion for the time being. Not until the 



Ii6 "How do You Feed Him?" 

fluid warms to the heat of the receptacle into which 
it has been tossed does the work of assimilation 
commence. Hence physiologists deprecate the 
practice of taking copious draughts of cold water 
before eating, and cry out, however vainly, that 
the national beverage, iced water, as an accompani- 
ment to meals is ruining the American stomach- 
coats. If the walls of Baby's " musculo-membran- 
ous reservoir " were transparent, the fond mother 
who has been assured that milk taken directly from 
the refrigerator is quite as wholesome as warm 
would not repeat the experiment. The adviser who 
suggested persistency in the diet until the child is 
used to it, will also reassure her placidly that " all 
babies have colic and none ever die with it." 

A nursery spirit-lamp, with tea-kettle, porcelain 
and tin saucepans, costs little, and ought always to 
be within reach of the nurse's hand at night. Five 
minutes will suffice to bring the contents to the 
proper heat. Double that time would be profitably 
expended in inducing the warmth and general com- 
fortableness that send Baby back to dream-land 
before the bottle is emptied. 

Boil fresh milk if it should disagree with Baby's 
stomach. This is a wise precaution in warm weather 
when you have no facilities for keeping it on ice. 



"How do You Feed Him?" 117 

Do not assume that Baby must be hungry when 
he has eaten to repletion within half an hour. Nor 
is it a sign that he is ravenous for food if he seizes 
eagerly upon breast or bottle and intermits his 
screams. His six-year-old sister would suck sugar- 
candy to comfort her for the torture of stomach- 
ache or a crushed finger. 

Do not let Baby's bottle be his bed-fellow all 
night, that, Mrs. Gamp-like, he M may put his lips 
to it when he feels dispoged. ,, Even in cold 
weather the milk will ferment before morning. 
Sour milk is the most unnatural of artificial foods. 

Pearline, dissolved in hot water, cleanses the in- 
side of nursing-bottles well, if shaken up and down 
vigorously. Bicarbonate of soda is also useful in 
removing sour deposits from bottom and sides. 
After such rinsings the bottle must be washed 
thoroughly with pure hot water, then with cold. 

Never lose sight of the truth that milk is the only 
natural food of all young mammals. 

Withhold all artificial foods from the baby until 
he is six months old, or until the " drooling, " or 
watering of the mouth, shows that he begins to 
secrete saliva. Up to this time the milk-diet is the 
onlv safe one. 



ARTIFICIAL FOODS. 




HE ingredients should be few and simple 
of any form of artificial food prepared for 
a child under twelve months of age. 
The natural and the common-sense im- 
pulse is to give to nourishment prepared under 
the mother's eye, as it is needed, the preference 
over the patented parcels of doubtful antiquity 
and unknown components bought from druggists 
or others. 

A friend, whose six-months-old child stood in 
need of hand-feeding, once brought me what she 
denominated, in her maternal indignation, " a mur- 
derous mess " she had cooked with her own hands 
in a porcelain-lined kettle. It looked like biscuit- 
paste, was gray, streaked with yellow, and smelled 
like rancid butter, or, to speak more plainly, soap- 
grease. When, in the interests of the rising gen- 
eration, I forced myself to taste it, I was certain of 
the presence of saleratus or some cognate alkali, 



A rtific ia I Foods. 1 1 9 

and of sugar and salt, but rancidity held the 
balance of power. A neighbor had reared three 
babies upon this preparation and recommended it 
highly. My hostess had bought the certified pack- 
age from a respectable druggist, had taken it 
directly to the kitchen, and opened and cooked it 
according to printed directions within an hour after 
the purchase was made. 

Like accidents have befallen canned " Infants' 
Food" of divers brands and tempting titles. I 
have in mind one warranted to be superior to 
mother's milk, of which a hungry baby ate six 
times a day before my compassionate eyes. It was 
brownish, viscous, heterogeneous, and horrible. 
The complacent mother knew nothing of its com- 
position except that it was lauded by an acquaint- 
ance, and "so convenient, requiring only to be 
mixed with water to be ready for use." Baby liked 
it, for it was inordinately sweet, containing brown 
sugar or treacle. 

The most flagrant trifling with infantile digestion 
that ever came- directly under my observation was 
in a farm-house in a rich grazing country. In a 
first-floor chamber, where the breath of kine and 
the fragrance of the warm milk they gave night and 
morning in foaming pailfuls arose to the open win- 



120 Artificial Foods. 

dows, lay a puny baby fighting for his life with 
marasmus. The tearful mother had had no natural 
supply for him since he was three months old. Up 
to that time he was healthy and plump. Since 
her milk had failed — poor flat-chested, tallow-faced 
country girl ! — Baby had failed too. He weighed 
less now at four months old than when he was born. 

" Mother says I'll never raise him ! " sobbed the 
young matron. "Yet we've done everything we 
could to save him." 

While speaking she was coaxing the almost un- 
conscious creature to take a spoonful of something 
so equivocal in complexion and consistency that I 
asked what it was. 

" Soda cracker ', pounded fine and wet with cold 
water" was the reply. "We have fed him on it 
altogether since I lost my l nurse.' Cows' milk is 
so apt to disagree with teething babies, mother 
says, and this is so simple it couldn't hurt a fly. 
Sometimes, when he is very weak, I put a little 
brandy in it." 

The story is literally true. 

A stout heart may well quail at the thought of 
giving any recipe for the preparation of other nurs- 
ery food than the simple substitute for human milk 
described in our last chapter. When the cereals 



Artificial Foods. 121 

that give body to seemingly innocent mixtures, and 
the sugar that sweetens them, are adulterated for 
the market, one hesitates to say what is in the cup 
of pap held to the eager little mouth. While not 
denying that some of the ready-made foods may be 
safely used when positively known to be fresh, I 
may venture to offer a recipe used for a term of 
years, and with excellent effect, in my own nursery, 
and to my knowledge in many others where strong, 
healthy babies were reared. It is especially useful 
as food for children whose increase of growth and 
strength has outrun the mother's ability to provide 
fully for their needs, and who require more sub- 
stantial nourishment than " cambric," otherwise 
" white tea." 

FARINA PORRIDGE. 

Half-a-pint of boiling water. 
Half-a-pint of fresh milk. 

One large tablespoonful of Hecker's farina, wet up with a 
little cold water. 

Two teaspoonfuls of white sugar. 
A pinch of salt. 

Pour the hot water, slightly salted, into a farina 
or custard-kettle ; be sure that it boils before stir- 
ring-in the wet farina. Boil and stir a quarter of an 

hour, by which time the mixture should be well 
6 



122 Artificial Foods. 

thickened and smooth. Add the milk, still stirring, 
and cook fifteen minutes more. Take from the fire 
and sweeten. Give it to the child a little more than 
blood-warm. 

Make as much in the morning as will last all day 
and be sufficient, when fresh milk is added, to form 
a supply for a possible midnight meal. Keep it in 
a cool place, and prepare it for use by the addition 
of a little hot (not boiled) milk, beaten in. Pour it 
into the bottle as you would milk, or give from a 
pap-cup. When the farina is warmed over for a 
" bottle-baby," thin the cooked porridge with warm 
milk to the consistency of gruel that can easily pass 
through the tube and nipple of the bottle. See for 
yourself that the farina is perfectly free from must 
or sourness. 

Children under half-a-year of age should be fed 
from a bottle, say the best authorities, suction being 
the natural process of acquiring nourishment, aug- 
menting the flow of saliva and thus facilitating di- 
gestion. 

The " best authorities " are men at once wise and 
humble enough to follow nature's methods most 
closely. In the friendly hope that each mother 
who reads these papers is blessed with such a one 
in her medical adviser, I add a final word of caution. 



Artificial Foods. 123 

Give your baby nothing beyond his natural aliment 
without consultation with this judicious counsellor. 
Be careful not to over-salt infants' food. Dis- 
regard of this rule forms the taste for high season- 
ing, and disrelish of whatever is to the vitiated 
palate insipid, whereas it is simply wholesome. 
Porridge over-sweetened and over-salted likewise 
creates thirst, and thirst fretfulness. 




WHEN TO FEED HIM. 

much of a child's general comfort, if not 
of its health, depends upon the regularity 
with which food is administered, that any 
recommendation of a regimen for the 
nursery would be incomplete which did not include 
instruction on this head. Having elsewhere given 
my views and laid down guiding rules on the sub- 
ject, I may be excused for making here a longer 
extract from a w T ork already printed # than I should 
consider justifiable if I could state the case more 
distinctly now than when the following was written : 

" Another cardinal principle in feeding an infant is regu- 
larity as to time and quantity. Begin by giving the breast 
or bottle every hour and a half, and gradually widen the 
intervals between meals, until at three months of age this 
settles into a fixed period of three hours. Before this rule 
has been established for a fortnight you will observe that the 



* Eve's Daughters, p. 37. 



When to Feed Him. 125 

delicate mechanism of appetite and digestion has accepted 
the regulation of intelligent power, and adjusted itself most 
amiably to the arrangement. The advantages of the system 
are almost as signal to mother as to child. She can absent 
herself from the nursery and house for a quarter of the work- 
ing day with great comfort of mind and body. Baby will not 
grow hungry while she is away, nor will the milk-ducts fill 
painfully before the nursing season is at hand. The little 
one will play contentedly in the parent's sight without teasing 
her for food in the many ways that try the temper and nerves 
of both, and when out of her presence the happy child for- 
gets that it has a mother. The weak obstinacy of women 
who make their boast of the soft hearts that will not let them 
deny the darlings anything would be less reprehensible if it 
acted hurtfully only upon themselves. . . ." 

The seasons of Baby's meals should be house- 
hold habits by the time he is allowed to partake of 
cooked food. Do not blunt the zest which he 
ought to bring to the consumption of regular ra- 
tions by intervening nibbles and lunches. He will 
learn to expect and depend upon these, and be 
discontented when they are withheld. The prac- 
tice of appeasing him when restless, from whatever 
cause, by thrusting a cracker, a slice of bread, or, 
worse yet, a " hunk" of gingerbread or a " cooky " 
into his hand, is discountenanced by wise mothers. 
He besmears his face and clothes, drops crumbs on 



126 When to Feed Him. 

the carpet, and makes a continual want for himself. 
When the hour comes for feeding him give him his 
quantum of proper food, properly prepared. Let 
him eat it leisurely, and as soon as he is old enough 
to sit at a table serve his meal neatly in plate, cup, 
or saucer, set on a clean cloth, his own spoon, 
china, and finger-napkin laid in order. These are 
not trifles. More Americans would breakfast, dine, 
and sup in healthful decorum, and fewer " feed," if 
they were trained from infancy to consider a meal 
as a ceremonial observance ; and the need of popu- 
lar essays on " Table Manners " would be less 
urgent. 

To secure health it is often necessary to vary 
Baby's bill-of-fare. A preparation which -agrees 
perfectly with one child upsets the digestion of 
another. Should an article of diet, approved by 
fofemothers and contemporary gossips, persist in 
non-assimilation when introduced to our Baby's 
digestive organs, we need not be disheartened. 
There is a choice even among the simples to which 
we should confine ourselves, nor is the range of 
these simples so narrow as would appear at a casual 
survey of the list. 

Again, certain kinds of nourishment that agree 
with the system in winter do not agree with it when 



When to Feed Him. 127 

summer relaxes the frame or when illness heats the 
blood. The intelligent parent will study the prop- 
erties and tendencies of what are classed among 
suitable edibles for the upbuilding of her child in 
vigor and growth, and adapt these each to its season 
and circumstances. 

In illustration of what has been stated I give here- 
with recipes for two preparations which may be 
taken in cold weather, without risk, by a healthy 
weanling a year old and upward. 



OATMEAL PORRIDGE. 

Get the best Irish oatmeal, giving the preference to that 
which is somewhat finely ground. 

One-half cup of oatmeal soaked over night in a cup of cold 
water. 

One pint of warm, not hot, water. 

One-third teaspoonful of salt. 

Stir the soaked meal into the warm water, set 
over the fire in a farina-kettle, and stir from time to 
time, until it is boiling hot. Then beat up from the 
bottom with a w r ooden spoon to a lumpless batter, 
repeating this every five minutes for at least three- 
quarters of an hour. You cannot cook it too much 
if you keep plenty of boiling water in the outer ves- 



128 When to Feed Him. 

sel. Scorched porridge is nauseous — unspeakably ! 
Stir in the salt faithfully at the last, and should the 
mixture thicken to unexpected stiffness thin with 
boiling water. Turn into a bowl, dip out enough 
for a meal, and serve in mug or saucer, beating in 
while hot enough milk to bring it to the consistency 
of gruel ; sweeten slightly, and let baby have it. 

Keep the reserve in a cool place, and add, when 
it is to be used, sufficient hot — never boiled milk — 
to reduce it to the proper consistency. 



HOMINY AND MILK. 

One-half cup of fine hominy, soaked five or six hours in 
one cup of milk. 

One pint of warm water. 
One-third teaspoonful of salt. 

Cook as you would oatmeal, stirring often for one 
hour after it reaches the boiling-point. Thin with 
milk, sweeten slightly, and give while warm. Keep 
what is not immediately needed on ice, mixing with 
hot milk when used. 

It should be added that this preparation is slightly 
laxative in its effects. It may be used instead of 
drugs w T hen a gentle aperient is needed. 

Babies' food should be cooked in tin, glazed 



When to Feed Him. 129 

earthenware, or porcelain vessels, never in copper or 
brass, on which verdigris (a deadly poison) will form 
in an hour's time, given the agencies of acid, heat» 
and atmospheric air. If tin saucepans are used, see 
that they are perfectly clean, and scalded just be- 
fore the milk goes in. The seamless saucepans are 
best, also the seamless pans for holding milk. 
Porcelain-lined kettles should every day be carefully 
examined for cracks. Some are not safe when thus 
injured, the substance used to join the china to the 
outer metal casing containing poisonous ingre- 
dients. Earthenware, properly glazed, is subject to 
no such objection, but milk, porridge, etc., should be 
turned into another vessel as soon as it comes from 
the fire, and that in which it was cooked set to soak 
in warm water. When it is clean, rinse with cold. 

A rounded tablespoonful of dry wheat flour, of 
corn-starch, or ground rice is equal to an ounce 
in weight. It is well to bear this in mind in the 

preparation of farinaceous food for the nursery. 
6* 



ARROWROOT. 




HE gravy alone is enough to add twenty 
years to one's age, I do assure you," 
said Mrs. Todgers. "The anxiety of 
that one item keeps the mind continu- 
ally on the stretch." 

The absurd speech comes more aptly to the mind 
than any dignified combination of words in jotting 
down the title of this chapter. 

" Arrowroot — a nutritive starch, obtained from 
the root of the Maranta arnndinacea, and from the 
roots and grains of other plants ; used as medi- 
cinal food." 

Thus the Nestor of American lexicographers. 

The battle-ground is that one word "nutritive." 
Says a popular treatise on infants' food: "Thou- 
sands of children have been starved to death on 
arrowroot, and thousands more will follow them to 
the grave, slain in the same manner. It is starch, 
and worse than starch, the latter substance possess- 
ing more nutritive qualities than arrowroot." 



Arrowroot. 131 

An eminent living physician, after forty years' 
practice, writes to me : " If you can get pure Ber- 
muda arrowroot, you will find it one of the lightest, 
yet most nutritious articles of food known in die- 
tetics. I have kept patients, adults as well as chil- 
dren, alive upon it and nothing else for days, until 
they rallied into convalescence. My stomach could 
retain nothing but arrowroot for three weeks while 
I lay ill with typhus fever. I have no hesitation in 
recommending it for nursery use." 

While giving both sides of the question, as main- 
tained by those who should know of what they are 
speaking, I may be permitted the relation of my 
personal experience in this matter. The prepara- 
tions of arrowroot given herewith have been used 
in my family for twenty-five years. In that time I 
listened to so many discussions for and against it 
as food for infants and invalids that for a long time 
my mind, like Mrs. Todgers', was kept continually 
on the stretch. Judging, then, from what one 
mother and housekeeper has seen and learned from 
actual experiment, I modestly record my belief in 
arrowroot as a "nutritive starch." While giving 
the preference to farina as a regular diet for strong 
and well children, I yet have seen babies as lusty 
and healthy reared upon arrowroot milk-porridge. 



132 Arrowroot. 

Arrowroot jelly and blanc- mange have held an hon- 
orable place in the taste and confidence of parents 
and little ones. As nursery-desserts for children of 
two years old and upward they are excellent. 

To this frank and familiar preamble I annex the 
following recipes. 



ARROWROOT MILK-PORRIDGE. 
One large cup of fresh milk, new if you can get it. 
One cup of boiling water. 

One full teaspoonful of arrowroot, wet to a paste with cold 
water. 

Two teaspoonfuls of white sugar. 
A pinch of salt. 

Put the sugar into the milk, the salt into the 
boiling water, which should be poured into a farina- 
kettle. Add the wet arrowroot, and boil, stirring 
constantly until it is clear ; put in the milk, and 
cook ten minutes, stirring often. 

Give while warm, adding hot milk should it be 
thicker than gruel. 



ARROWROOT JELLY. 
Half-a-pint of boiling water. 

One scant tablespoonful of Bermuda arrowroot wet with 
cold water. 

Two teaspoonfuls of white sugar. 
A pinch of salt. 



Arrowroot 133 

Make as you do the porridge, omitting the milk, 
and cooking ten minutes in all. Turn into a mould 
wet with cold water to form. To be eaten when 
cold, with cream and powdered sugar. 



ARROWROOT BLANC-MANGE. 

One large cup of boiling milk. 

One even tablespoonful of arrowroot rubbed to a paste 
with cold water. 

Two teaspoonfuls of white sugar. 
A pinch of salt. 
Flavor with rose-water. 

Proceed as in the foregoing recipes, boiling and 
stirring eight minutes. Turn into a wet mould, 
and when firm serve with cream and powdered 
sugar. 

Do not let a young baby drink ice-water or eat 
ices. To quench his thirst give a teaspoonful at a 
time of cool, not cold, water. Copious draughts 
even of this would chill his stomach below the tem- 
perature at which digestion is a normal process. 



THE PORRIDGE FAMILY. 




OR an exhaustive treatment of the porridge 
family many chapters, filling far more 
space than that allotted to this depart- 
ment, would be required. The manage- 
ment of the ingredients entering into the various 
preparations known under this name is substanti- 
ally the same with all. The milk must be fresh, the 
water clean and boiling, and never cooked in iron 
or copper ; the cereal which gives name and char- 
acter to the mixture should be good of its kind, not 
sour, musty, or stale ; each sort of porridge should 
contain a little salt, and the whole be carefully 
boiled in a vessel set within another holding boiling 
water. 

This last rule is absolute. The most vigilant 
watch and faithful stirring are sometimes ineffectual 
to prevent the dreaded "catch" of boiling milk 
on the bottom of the saucepan — a " catch " that 
means scorch, and an instant change in the sub- 
stance acted upon. 



The Porridge Family. 135 

CORN-STARCH PORRIDGE. 

One even tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet up with a little 
cold water. 

One cup of fresh milk. 
One cup of boiling water. 
A pinch of salt. 

Add milk and salt to the boiling water ; put in the 
paste, and stir ten minutes over the fire. Sweeten 
very slightly, and give to the child when rather 
more than blood-warm. 

The matron of one of the most successful day- 
nurseries in New York feeds the hundreds of in- 
fants left with her every year with this porridge, 
and reports that it more rarely disagrees with them 
than any other kind of nourishment. But it is 
made from the best ingredients and cooked under 
her own eye. 



RICE-FLOUR PORRIDGE. 

This is made in the same manner and with the 
same proportions/ but ought to be cooked longer — 
say fourteen or fifteen minutes. It is very nourish- 
ing, and may be often used with excellent effect for 
children who have a tendency to looseness of the 
bowels. 



136 The Porridge Family. 

INDIAN-MEAL PORRIDGE. 

Two teaspoonfuls of Indian meal and one of wheat flour, 
wet to a paste with cold water. 
One cup of boiling water. 
One cup of fresh milk. 
A liberal pinch of salt. 

Set the boiling water over the fire, salt, and stir 
in the wet paste. Cook twenty minutes, stirring at 
intervals ; add the milk, and let it simmer ten min- 
utes longer, stirring up well from the bottom four 
or five times. Strain through a colander to free 
from lumps, sweeten slightly, and give while warm. 
This is slightly laxative. 



GROUND-RICE PORRIDGE. 

One cup of boiling milk. 
One full tablespoonful of ground rice. 
Four tablespoonfuls of cold water. 
A pinch of salt. 

Wet the flour into paste with cold water, salt 
very lightly, and stir into the boiling milk. Cook 
in a farina-kettle for fifteen minutes, stirring all the 
while. Sweeten slightly. This furnishes an excel- 
lent change of diet when farina or corn-starch 
proves too laxative. . 



The Porridge Family. 137 

FROTHED PORRIDGE. 

Two cups of boiling milk. 

Two tablespoonfuls of arrowroot, corn-starch, or " new 
process " flour. 

Four tablespoonfuls of cold water. 
White of an egg, beaten stiff. 

Wet the arrowroot or flour with cold water, stir 
into the milk, and cook for half an hour in a farina- 
kettle after the water in the outer vessel begins to 
boil hard. Stir often. Take from the fire, stir in 
lightly and swiftly the whipped white of egg f 
sweeten slightly, and serve as soon as it is cool 
enough to be eaten with comfort. 

Do not neglect the precaution of dropping into 
boiling milk, in warm weather, a tiny bit of soda 
not larger than a green pea. 



WHEATEN GRITS, OR CRACKED WHEAT. 

Three heaping tablespoonfuls of cracked wheat (Hecker's 
if you can get it). 
Three cups of water. 
Half a cup of milk. 

A bit of soda the size of a pea, stirred into the milk. 
Half an even teaspoonful of salt. 



138 The Porridge Family. 

Cover the grits with one cup of cold water, and let 
them swell for four hours. Pour two cups of water, 
just warm, into the inner farina-kettle, add the grits, 
and set in boiling water. Stir up often from the 
bottom to prevent lumping, and cook for one hour 
after the contents of the inner vessel reach the boil. 
Beat hard to a smooth batter without removing the 
kettle from the fire, add the milk, and boil twenty 
minutes longer, stirring well. This will make an 
abundant breakfast for two hearty children. Serve 
in saucers ; sprinkle with sugar and cover with fresh 
milk or cream. 

A diet of cracked wheat will sometimes break 
up a stubborn habit of constipation. It is always 
slightly, and when the child is well, healthfully, 
cathartic, if thoroughly cooked. It may be pru- 
dent to substitute it for oatmeal as the first course 
of summer-breakfasts, the conventional oatmeal- 
porridge having a tendency to heat the blood. 



MUSH AND MILK. 

This may be placed in the category of laxative 
food, and will be found to be far better than drugs 
as a regulator of the bowels when gentle and grad- 
ual influences are needed. 



The Porridge Family. 139 

Four tablespoonfuls of Indian meal wet to a paste with 
cold water. 

Three cups of boiling water. 
Half a teaspoonful of salt. 

Stir the paste into the water and cook steadily, 
stirring often, for an hour and a half. Should it 
stiffen too much add more boiling water. The 
mush ought to be of the consistency of porridge. 
Serve with sugar and fresh milk. 

In feeding children with these semi-liquid prep- 
arations, beware of the too common practice of 
covering them so thickly with sugar as to create 
acidity of the stomach. This is converting good 
into evil. 



PANADA. 

Three Boston crackers (fresh and sweet), split. 
A saltspoonful of salt. 

Enough boiling water to cover the crackers. 
One tablespoonful of white sugar. 

Cover the bottom of a bowl with the split crackers 
sprinkled with salt and sugar ; put in more crackers, 
season in the same way, and so on until all are in. 
Cover at least an inch deep with water poured 
directly from the boiling kettle. You cannot be 
too particular on this point. Set this vessel in 



140 The Porridge Family. 

another of hot water, draw to one side of the 
range, put on a close lid, that none of the steam may 
escape, and leave thus for half an hour or more. 
Give to the child while warm, and as soon as it can 
be eaten after it is taken out of the warm water. If 
allowed to stand long it becomes clammy. 

Panada prepared exactly as directed in this 
recipe is really palatable and digestible, and most 
children eat it relishfully. Each half cracker will 
keep its shape, yet be as tender as jelly, and almost 
translucent. 



MILK-TOAST. 

When properly made, milk-toast is a most satis- 
factory supper for babies over two years old. Pare 
away the crust from slices of stale, light, sweet 
bread, and with a cake-cutter or sharp-edged tum- 
bler cut each of these into a round, cooky-shaped 
piece. 

(They taste better to Baby— and to bigger chil- 
dren — in this form than in the rectangular slice. I 
know one baby, twenty years of age, who, when 
appetite flags, begs for "round cream-toast, such 
as mamma used to make for us when we were wee 
bits of things.") 



The Porridge Family. 141 

Spread the rounds on a platter ; set them on the 
oven a few minutes until they begin to roughen all 
over. Then toast them quickly over a clear fire, 
and scrape off every burnt crumb to bring the sur- 
face to a uniform shade of yellow-brown. Dip 
each piece, as it is taken from the toaster, for a 
hasty second, into boiling water (salted), butter 
lightly, and pile them in a bowl. Cover out of 
sight with scalding milk, also salted, fit on a close 
top to the bowl, and set in a pan of boiling water 
in a pretty brisk oven for fifteen or twenty minutes. 
The process will yield a dish so unlike the insipid 
stuff accepted and eaten under the name of " dip," 
or " milk," or u soft toast," as to justify to behold- 
ers and eater the expenditure of thought and pains 
required for its production. Babies soon discrimi- 
nate between "messes" and dainty, delicate food, 
none the less delicious because the ingredients are 
simple and inexpensive. 

If you can, instead of the scalding milk, use half- 
cream, half-milk, the taste is still more nutritious 
and palatable. 



TO KEEP MILK SWEET. 
Too much emphasis cannot be given to the in* 
junction to keep milk sweet in hot weather. The 



142 The Porridge Family. 

infant's natural nourishment needs almost as much 
care in summer as does the consumer of it. The 
best method of keeping it unchanged, and, there- 
fore, wholesome, is to set it in a clea,7i y cold refrig- 
erator as soon as it comes into the house. When 
it is needed, take the pitcher or cup into which it is 
to be poured to the refrigerator, not the milk-pan 
into the kitchen. Nurses generally neglect this 
precaution. The pan is often left in the heated 
outer air for five, ten, fifteen minutes, thus causing 
the milk to " turn." In the country, where ice is 
not readily obtainable, a really good cellar, a spring- 
house, or a dairy through which runs a living 
stream of water, is the next best thing to a refrig- 
erator. If none of these are at hand, pour the rnilk 
intended for the baby into a clean stone jug, cork 
it securely, tie oiled silk over the stopper, and sus- 
pend the vessel in the well. 




PREPARATIONS FOR DELICATE CHIL- 
DREN. 

S a fitting accompaniment to the chapter on 
" The Baby that must go to the Country, " 
it is well to set down a few recipes for the 
preparation of food that may stay the fail- 
ing strength of the little one debilitated by heat, or 
suffering from the disorders incident to the sum- 
mer season. Mothers err most innocently in try- 
ing to tempt the child's appetite with dainties which 
are wholesome enough for the stronger stomachs of 
his elders, but almost as deleterious as pounded 
glass to his. 

These recipes have been tried and found to be 
trustworthy. But, while the food cooked in obedi- 
ence to the directions here furnished is simple and 
digestible, it must be remembered that no change 
should be made in the diet of a delicate or ailing 
child without the consent of the physician. 



144 Preparations for Delicate Children. 

RICE JELLY. 
One-half cup of raw rice. 

Three cups of cold water. 

One cup of fresh, sweet milk. 

One-quarter teaspoonful of salt. 

Bit of soda, not larger than a pea, dropped into the milk. 

Wash the rice, and then soak it for four hours in 
just enough water to cover it. Add, without drain- 
ing, to the cold water ; bring to the boil in a farina- 
kettle, and cook until the rice is broken all to 
pieces and the water reduced to half the original 
quantity. Add the milk and simmer, covered, for 
half an hour. Strain through coarse cheese-cloth, 
pressing and twisting hard. Sweeten slightly, and 
feed to the child when it has cooled sufficiently. 



SAGO JELLY 

Is made the same way. 



BARLEY-WATER. 

Three tablespoonfuls of pearl barley. 

Three cupfuls of boiling water. 

Just enough salt to take off the " flat " taste. 

Pick over and wash the barley carefully. Cover 
with cold water and soak four hours. Put the boil- 



Preparations for Delicate Children. 145 

ing water into a farina-kettle, stir in the barley 
without draining, and cook, covered, for an hour 
and a half. Strain through coarse muslin, salt and 
sweeten slightly, and give when it is cool enough 
to be drunk with comfort. 



TO AST- WATER. 

Two thick, crustless slices of stale, light bread. 
Two cups of boiling water. 

Toast the bread to a crisp brown, but do not let 
it get charred. Lay in a bowl, cover with boiling 
water, fit on a close top, and steep until cold. 
Strain through muslin without squeezing, and give, 
a teaspoonful at a time, when the child's fevered 
system demands water. It is more palatable if 
sweetened slightly. For children two years old and 
upward you may add a bit of ice to the toast-water, 
or keep it on the ice. 



DRIED FLOUR PORRIDGE. 

Two cups of flour. 

Three quarts of cold water. 

Tie up the dry flour securely in a stout, clean 
bag of muslin or linen ; put it into the water and 



146 Preparations for Delicate Children. 

let it boil, after the water begins to bubble, for at 
least four hours. Open and remove the cloth, turn 
out the ball of flour on a flat dish, and dry all day 
in the hot sun, or four hours in an open (moderate) 
oven. Or, if it is made in the evening, leave it in 
a cooling oven until morning. It should not be at 
all browned by the heat. 

To make the porridge, grate a tablespoonful from 
the ball, wet into a paste with cold water, mix up 
with a cupful of boiling milk, salt very lightly, boil 
five minutes, and it is ready for use. Keep in a 
cool, dry place. 

An excellent preparation in cases of " summer 
complaint," or weak bowels from any cause. 



BEEF-TEA. 

One pound of lean beef, chopped fine. 
One quart of cold water. 

Put the beef into a saucepan, pour the water over 
it, cover, and set at one side of the range where it 
will not reach the simmering-point in less than an 
hour. Cook thus very slowly for five or six hours, 
lifting the cover several times to break the meat 
apart should it clot together in cooking. Set aside 
in a cool place until it is perfectly cold ; remove 



Preparations for Delicate Children. 147 

every particle of fat from the surface ; strain 
through stout, coarse muslin, pressing hard to ex- 
tract the nourishment. Throw away the exhausted 
rags of boiled flesh. About a pint of liquid should 
be left after the boiling and straining are accom- 
plished. Set this over the fire in a clean saucepan ; 
when scalding hot — not boiling — stir in the white 
and shell of an Qgg y and bring quickly to a sharp 
boil, stirring often to prevent the coagulated egg 
from sticking to the sides or bottom of the vessel. 
Cook thus for three minutes, and strain through a 
colander lined with a thick cloth, but do not squeeze 
or rub the clotted egg. Salt lightly to taste. 

You will have a large coffee-cup of amber-colored 
bouillon, in which is the strength of a pound of 
meat. It may be eaten either cold or warm. This 
is a good recipe, and cannot but give satisfaction 
if follozved exactly. 



BARLEY-MILK. 

Three tablespoonfuls of pearl barley. 
One cup of boiling water. 
One cup of fresh milk. 
A pinch of salt. 

Pick the barley over carefully and soak it for two 
hours in just enough cold water to cover it. Add, 



148 Preparations for Delicate Children. 

without draining, to the salted boiling water, and 
cook, covered, an hour and a half. Strain through 
coarse muslin, pressing it hard ; heat quickly to a 
boil ; stir into the milk and sweeten slightly. 
Barley-milk is easily digested and nutritious. 



goat's milk. 

This will often agree with children when cow's 
milk seriously deranges the stomach. It is most 
wholesome, and to most tastes, most palatable 
when drunk directly after milking and while still 
warm. In some cities and many country towns 
this may be obtained without difficulty. In France 
and Switzerland a " milk-cure" is found in nearly 
every village, and is liberally patronized by travel- 
ling Americans, who never think of suggesting the 
establishment of like resorts in their own land. 

When given to infants who are not yet w r eaned, 
goat's milk should be diluted with one-fourth as 
much boiling water as there is milk. 



PEPTONIZED MILK 

Is not recommended as " bottle-food," but as a 
drink for delicate children who require a milk-diet, 
but cannot digest raw milk. 



Preparations for Delicate Children. 149 

Have put up by a druggist a dozen papers, each 
containing six grains of pancreatic powder (Ex- 
traction Pancreatis) and twenty grains of bicarbon- 
ate of soda. 

To prepare the milk, put one of these powders 
into a quart-bottle (with a wide mouth) ; pour upon 
it half a cupful (a gill) of blood-warm water ; shake 
until the powder is dissolved, then add two cups 
of fresh — if possible, new — milk. Cork the bottle 
loosely and set in warm water. The temperature 
should not much exceed ioo° F., about as hot as 
can be comfortably borne by the back of the hand. 
If the temperature goes much higher the pancrea- 
tizing is arrested. Throw a cloth over all, and 
leave it for one hour, after which keep it on ice. 

The milk, when peptonized, will be creamy in 
color and taste, and have a slightly peculiar flavor, 
not unlike goat's milk. Those who drink it soon 
become fond of it. 

This is not a physician's prescription, but the 
recipe of a house-mother who has tried it accept- 
ably in her own family. 



LIME-WATER IN MILK. 
It frequently happens in warm weather that the 
mother sees indications of sour stomach in her in- 



150 Preparations for Delicate Children. 

fant, showing that the milk becomes acid almost as 
soon as it is swallowed. A simple and usually ef- 
fectual corrective is to add a teaspoonful of lime- 
water to each bottleful of milk-and-water given at 
his tri-daily meals. Physicians sometimes advise 
this when an eruption resembling prickly heat ap- 
pears on the infant's face and hands, betokening 
disordered digestion. 



NURSERY DESSERTS. 




UDICIOUS mothers no longer let very- 
young children eat pies and rich pud- 
dings, yet do not ignore the craving 
for sweets which is, to a certain extent, 
natural in the human system. Some of the des- 
serts for which recipes are here given will be found 
wholesome and good if prepared for the family 
dinner. 



SAGO PUDDING. 

Half a cup of pearl sago, soaked four or five hours in one 
cup of cold water. 

Three cups of fresh milk. 

A good pinch of salt. 

A bit of soda not larger than an English pea. (This will 
prevent the milk from curdling while boiling. The precau- 
tion should never be omitted in warm w r eather.) 

Heat the milk in a farina-kettle until almost 
scalding. Drop in the salt and soda, stir two or 
three times to dissolve them, then add the sago 



152 Nursery Desserts. 

slowly, stirring each spoonful thoroughly. Cook 
fifteen minutes after all goes in, stirring almost con- 
stantly, and beating up the mixture from the bot- 
tom to avoid clogging or lumping. 

Turn out, and eat while warm, with sugar and 
cream. This is also good when allowed to get cold 
in a mould previously wet with cold water. Turn 
out when firm, and eat with powdered sugar and 
cream, adding, if you like, a little rose-water to 
flavor the cream. 



RICE PUDDING. 

Three tablespoonfuls of raw rice, soaked three hours in 
cold water. 

Two cups of milk. 

As much salt as will lie on a half-dime. 

One beaten egg. 

A bit of soda the size of a green pea. (Be careful not to 
put in too much.) 

Drain the rice in a colander lined with a piece of 
coarse cloth, and put it in a farina-kettle with 
enough cold water to cover it. Salt, cover closely, 
and steam until soft, shaking up the inner kettle 
now and then, but never putting a spoon into it. 
When rice is cooked in this way each grain will 
keep its shape and be separate from the rest. Try 



Nursery Desserts. 153 

one to see if it is quite tender before taking the ves- 
sel from the fire. Should the water not be entirely- 
absorbed, drain off what is left, shake up the rice 
that it may lie loosely and lightly, and pour in the 
milk. This should be ready in another saucepan, 
warm but not scalding, the soda dissolved in it. 
Return to the fire, simmer fifteen minutes, boil up 
well once, turn into a bowl, and beat in the frothed 
egg at once. Eat with cream and sugar. 

If this be made the entire meal of a young child, 
serve in a bowl, sweeten slightly, and add milk to 
thin it to the consistency of gruel. 



BROWN PUDDING. 

One even cup of Graham flour, wet to a soft paste with 
cold water. 

One pint of fresh milk. 

A quarter-teaspoonful of salt. 

A bit of soda not larger than a pea. 

Warm the milk until a film begins to form on the 
top ; stir in salt and soda, then the flour paste. 
Continue to stir until the mixture is thick and 
smooth. Cook twenty-five minutes, stirring faith- 
fully and beating up hard. Pour into a bowl or an 
uncovered, deep dish. 



154 Nursery Desserts. 

Eat with sugar and cream. This is an excellent 
breakfast or dessert for children from two to five 
years of age. 



GRAHAM BREWIS. 

One cup of milk. 

Half a cup of stale Graham bread, crumbled very fine. 

Heat the milk to boiling ; remove from the fire, 
beat in the crumbs quickly and thoroughly, as you 
would whip up cake-batter, and serve as soon as it 
can be eaten with comfort. Sift sugar on each 
saucerful, and pour cream or milk over all. 



A MENU FOR BIGGER BABIES. 

RICE SOUP. 

Three tablespoonfuls of raw rice, soaked three hours in 
just enough water to cover it. 

One cupful of clear beef-tea or bouillon, diluted with a 
cupful of boiling water. 

One-half cupful of milk (sweet and fresh). 

Salt to taste. 



Heat the bouillon to boiling ; drain the rice and 
stir it in ; cover and cook gently until the rice is 
soft and broken to pieces. Turn the soup into a 
colander, rub the rice through it, and return to the 
fire. Add the milk, which should have been heated 
to scalding in another vessel ; salt ; bring quickly 
to the boil, beating briskly with a split spoon for a 
minute when it begins to bubble ; pour out and 
serve. 



15.6 A Menu for Bigger Babies. 

POACHED EGGS ON CREAM TOAST. 

As many eggs as there are children to eat them. 
The same number of rounds of crustless toast, lightly 
buttered. 

A cupful of hot milk, salted. 
Boiling water. 

Heat the water to boiling in a deep frying-pan, 
salt it slightly, and set on one side of the range 
where it will not boil, yet will hold the heat. Break 
each egg in a saucer, and slip dexterously into the 
water. When the white is "set," take up with a 
perforated ladle and lay it on its round of toast, 
already prepared in this way : As fast as the rounds 
are toasted and buttered dip them into the boiling 
(salted) milk and arrange them on a hot platter. 
When the eggs are all in place salt them slightly 
and serve. 

If you desire a more savory dish, pour a table- 
spoonful of broth or bouillon on each piece of toast 
after dipping it in the milk. 



BAKED POTATOES. 
Select large, fair potatoes of uniform size, wash, 
wipe, and lay them in a good oven. They will be 
done in about an hour, and should be served at 



A Menu for Bigger Babies. 157 

once. Test them by pressing the largest hard be- 
tween your fingers. If it gives easily it is ready to 
be eaten. 

As the potatoes are too hot for little fingers, let 
mother or nurse prepare them by removing the 
skins, scraping out the inside, and rubbing soft and 
fine before seasoning with salt and butter. No 
lumps should be left in the mealy mass. 

An unripe, or underdone, or watery potato is 
one of the least digestible of edibles, as the same 
vegetable, fully grown and properly cooked, is one 
of the best. 



APPLE-SAUCE. 

Pare and slice ripe apples — Baldwins, Greenings, 
or other tart or tender varieties — and pack them 
into a porcelain-lined or tin saucepan ; cover barely 
with cold water to prevent scorching, and cook 
gently until they are very soft. Turn into a bowl 
and mash with a wooden spoon, press with the 
same through a colander, and sweeten to taste while 
warm. 

If the sugar is cooked into the apples they be- 
come a preserve and lose their flavor. " Con- 
serves " of all kinds are unfit for young children's 



158 A Menu for Bigger Babies. 

stomachs. Apple-sauce, such as is described here, 
is wholesome, pleasant to the taste, and slightly 
laxative to the bowels. It should be eaten with 
bread and butter. 



CUSTARD -PUDDING. 

Two cups of fresh milk. 
Two eggs. 

Two tablespoonfuls of sugar. 
A pinch of salt. 

Beat the eggs light, add the sugar, and whip 
them up together until smooth and creamy. Stir 
in the milk (salted very slightly), pour into a bake- 
dish, and set this in a dripping-pan full of boiling 
water until the middle of the custard is " set." 
Take directly from the oven. Eat cold. 




FRUITS. 

OMMON-SENSE would say that the cau- 
tion to withhold acid fruits from a 
nursing-infant is absurdly gratuitous. 
Observation proves the reverse. The 
unweaned babies of parents who ought to know 
better are treated to tastes and " munches " of ber- 
ries, apples, peaches, oranges, bananas, until the 
little things learn to cry for them as for the candy 
and sugar that have created a useless craving. Up 
to the age of two years a healthy child needs little 
variety in his daily bill of fare, and this small need 
is provided for by combinations of farinaceous food 
prepared, or eaten with milk. When he begins to 
eat eggs' and meat, fruits aid digestion, cool and 
sweeten the blood. The disorders that arise from 
the moderate use of them are generally due to un- 
wise choice of kind and quality. Foreign products, 



160 Fruits. 

gathered unripe, withered, stale in taste and tough 
of fibre, or as is often the case with bananas, 
plantains and mangoes, partially decayed, should 
never be given to Baby. Raisins are still more ob- 
jectionable. 

The first requisite with native fruits is that they 
should be ripe ; the second, freshness and sound- 
ness. Dr. Hall, of the Journal of Health, used to 
say that it was not possible for a well person to eat 
enough freshly-gathered, fully ripe fruit to hurt him. 
Taking the statement with an abundant pinch of 
qualifying salt, we find it true that the fruits of the 
earth have a direct mission to man, the value of 
which is imperfectly appreciated even by sanitarians. 
One is tempted to travesty the Missionary Hymn 
in seeing with what " lavish kindness " the tropics 
bring forth cooling acids — refrigerant, antiseptic, 
and tonic — to temper the heated blood and restrain 
excess of biliary secretions. In our own land 
summer comes laden with esculents which are a 
catholicon for the ills provoked by heat. If, with 
more than heathen blindness, we bow down tri- 
daily before the flesh-pot, let us show Christian 
mercy to our children, and not rear them in bestial 
idolatry. 

Pre-eminent among fruits, for wholesomeness and 



Fruits. 161 

nutritious properties, also for cheapness and abund- 
ance, are 

APPLES. 

The tart varieties outrank the sweet in value. 
The flesh is more tender, the juices promote diges- 
tion, and are gently laxative. For the babies' eat- 
ing they must be mellow and unspecked. Decayed 
spots are unwholesome in themselves, and affect the 
quality of the rest of the apple in which they ap- 
pear. Pare the fruit, remove the core and seeds, 
and give it to the child before it begins to darken 
by exposure to the air. For a hardy fruit, the 
apple is surprisingly susceptible to atmospheric in- 
fluences when it has been flayed, changing color 
and depreciating in flavor in a few minutes, and in 
half-an-hour becoming tough and flabby. Throw 
away what is not eaten at once, instead of laying it 
aside for " another time." For dessert he can have 
nothing more toothsome and beneficial. An apple 
eaten after breakfast or supper will correct consti- 
pation. A barrel of Baldwins, Greenings, or Pippins 
in the cellar, often picked over and freely used, is 
better than all the contents of the family medicine^ 
chest as a kindly alterative and general regulator 
of the system. 



1 62 Frtiits. 

BAKED APPLES (TART). 

Sub-acid winter apples are nutritious baked whole. 
Cook rather slowly, that they may be roasted to the 
heart without scorching. When soft throughout, 
lay in a deep dish, sprinkle with sugar and set away, 
closely covered, until perfectly cold. To prepare 
one for eating, remove the skin, scraping the inside 
with a spoon, that the best part of the apple be not 
lost ; in like manner rid the core of flesh before 
throwing it away. Cut the crust from a slice of 
stale bread — Graham bread is best — spread with 
the apple-pulp, and sprinkle lightly with sugar. 
Half-a-dozen such slices would be a more nourish- 
ing dinner for a day-laborer than the hunk of salt 
pork and fat-soaked beans or cabbage consumed 
by him at high noon in all seasons. A couple, and 
a mug of milk, are an excellent lunch for a hungry, 
growing child. 

Call it " apple pie," and he will relish it the more. 



STEAMED SWEET APPLES. 

As we have remarked, raw sweet apples, the 

luscious " Pound Sweet " not excepted — are less 

wholesome than tart. A simple test will show this 

in some degree. After eating heartily of them, 



Fr ttits. 163 

wipe the tongue and inside of the lips with a clean 
napkin and it will bring away a deposit in color like 
iron-mould, in character crudely, and mildly cor- 
rosive. Many people who eat freely and with ex- 
cellent results of tart apples, suffer severely from 
indigestion after eating a single sweet. I have seen 
healthy children "cramped" fearfully in conse- 
quence of a like indulgence. The aforesaid mild 
corrosive is likewise astringent. 

Sweet apples are mellowed and rendered innocu- 
ous by cooking, and in this form merit a place on 
the children's table. 

Core Campfields, or Pound Sweets, or sweet har- 
vest apples, without paring them, and pack in a 
baking-pan. Cover (barely) with cold water, invert 
another pan over them to keep in the steam, and 
cook tender in a moderate oven. Keep covered 
until cold. 

Eat, removing the skin, with sugar and cream, or 
with bread and butter without sugar. 



PEACHES 
Are best when ripe, sound, and uncooked. Pare 
and remove the stones. The notion that the furry 
skin of the peach helps digestion is as unfounded 



164 Fruits. 

as that the pits of cherries serve the same pur- 
pose. 

Where there is a disposition to bowel complaint, 
peaches sometimes act as a corrective, while apples 
increase the disorder. 



PEARS. 



Pears, especially the coarse-grained varieties, are 
among the least desirable of the larger fruits for the 
nursery dietary. If acid, they are drastic ; if sweet, 
indigestible, and sometimes exceedingly astringent. 
Cooking does not make them wholesome, the 
sand-like grains remaining unaltered by the pro- 
cess. Whatever may be the digestive capabilities 
of bigger children, Baby is best without pears. 



BERRIES. 



Black raspberries and blackberries are such po- 
tent astringents that the utility of the extracts and 
decoctions of both is recognized in domestic medi- 
cal practice. When perfectly ripe and fresh they will 
not harm a healthy three-year-old. They ought, 
however, to be eaten without sugar and cream, as 
should strawberries. The smothering with cream 



Fruits. 165 

is of doubtful expediency when the dish is served 
for adults. For young children it is positively 
hurtful. 

Red raspberries are less hurtful than black. 
Huckleberries and cherries are laxatives. None of 
the small fruits are fit for babies to eat when 
bought in city markets. They are almost in- 
variably more than a day old, have been handled 
first by pickers, then by packers, and are more or 
less bruised in transportation. A bruise on fruit is 
incipient decomposition. 



GRAPES. 

Do not let Baby eat them in his own way, nor at 
all when you are not by. The skins are indigest- 
ible, and in the opinion of able writers on dietetics 
the seeds work more serious harm. A safe general 
rule in these matters is that no substance that defies 
the action of the gastric juices, but is passed from 
stomach to bowels unchanged, is fit or suitable for 
food. 



MEATS. 




psTjAID an Irish cook to me during Lent: 
" It's harrd wurruk this kapin' up a body's 
hearrt for daily labor on nothin' but fish 
an' eggs. I've ate six eggs for me break- 
fast not an hour ago, an' I'm fair kilt wid starva- 
tion this minnit. Somehow, the mate corner ain't 
full!" 

By the time our babies have become acclimated 
in the New World, behind which lies the Great 
Sea of Forgetfulness, we, who account ourselves 
wiser than Bridget, set about establishing within 
them the " meat corner.' ' The five-year-old native 
frets for flesh — roast, boiled, stewed, and fried; for 
gravy on potatoes, on rice, on bread — on whatever 
vehicle will contain the greasy broth. He has a 
lordly contempt for " messes that have no taste in 
them. ,, " Taste " standing for the flavor and reek 
of cooked flesh. 

Nothing is further from my purpose than to de- 



Meats. 167 

liver a philippic against food that combines savori- 
ness with strength-giving elements. While we work 
and talk and move in the frosty airs that range the 
temperate zone for half the year, we must supply 
fuel for inward combustion. When our Baby be- 
gins to play stoker on his own engine, he demands 
what will keep up the fires. It is a mistake to 
withhold it, almost as grave an error to give him 
all he craves, a graver blunder not to select the 
material best adapted for the work to be done. 

Unless ordered by a physician, it is seldom ad- 
visable to accustom a baby to a meat diet until he 
is from sixteen to eighteen months old. Up to 
this time he gets enough fatty matter from his 
milk, enough phosphates from cereals, to keep him 
in health and strength. Whatever animal food may 
be granted to him from this date forward should be 
judiciously chosen, properly cooked, and minced 
fine before he eats it. The italicised words are 
the key to the door of deliverance from evils many 
and dire. Before Baby is suffered to eat meat, 
teach him to chew well and slowly. When masti- 
cation becomes a popular exercise with us, national 
dyspepsia will go out. To make the initial steps 
easy, cut up Baby's portion of steak, chop, or 
chicken into tiny bits like a coarse powder, give 



1 68 Meats. 

him a little at a time, and no more until the former 
morsel is ground thoroughly by the sharp, small 
teeth. 



BEEF. 

This chief of animal foods deserves the order of 
knighthood bestowed upon it by merry King 
Charles. For Baby, set aside a slice of rare roast, 
or a bit of tenderloin from an underdone steak. 
No gravy, unless you moisten the minced slice 
with a spoonful of clear, red essence from the roast. 



MUTTON AND LAMB. 

The former is the more nutritious. Boiled or 
roast, it makes a good dinner for the nursery, ac- 
companied by rice and potatoes. A good chop, 
broiled, freed from skin and fat, will stimulate lag- 
ging appetite. Nor deny him the bone as a pri- 
vate treat, having seen that no loose or jagged bits 
are attached to it, which might choke him. 



VEAL 

Is less digestible and less nutritive than the meats 
just named by so many degrees, that the experi- 



Meats. 169 

rnent of putting it into young stomachs is haz- 
ardous. 



PORK 



Should not be so much as named in Baby's 
dietary. Fresh and salt, boiled, roast, and fried, 
it contains less material for brain-food, less for 
muscles and tissues, and more heating oil than 
any other flesh in common use by civilized peoples. 



POULTRY. 



When tender, and boiled, broiled or roasted, 
poultry is a favorite and unobjectionable nursery 
dish. Reject the skin and such fibrous parts as 
the drum-sticks, in cutting it up for infants. 



FRIED MEATS 



Of all kinds are unwholesome, even after the 
11 meat corner " is safely established. 



CLOTHING. 




OUTFITS. 

baby's first clothes. 
HE simplest outfit requisite would be : 
Six linen shirts. 
Six night-gowns of fine cotton. 
Six cambric or Nainsook slips. 
Two pretty dresses. 
Six cotton or cambric skirts. 
Four barrie-coats — i.e. , flannel skirts open all the 
way down and the sides hemmed. They are some- 
times called " pinning-blankets," and are worn day 
and night for the first month, afterward at night 
only. 

Four flannel skirts of better quality. 

Four flannel shirts. 

Six flannel bands. 

Thirty-six napkins oi linen diaper. 

Twenty-four smaller, of old linen. 



172 Outfits. 

Two flannel wrappers for morning wear when the 
weather is cool. 

A square of flannel, bound with ribbon or scal- 
loped with silk, to throw about the child in carry- 
ing it from one room to another. 

The first shirts are of linen lawn, but shirts of soft 
all-wool, or silk-warp flannel, or very soft-knitted 
ones are worn under the linen. Some skins do not 
like wool. The majority do. It may be that occasion- 
ally the knitted shirt causes distress, but on this 
point opinions vary. It is probable, for several 
reasons, that soft flannel is a better material for 
inner shirts than knitted or crocheted wool. 

The edges of the band should not be hemmed, 
but bound with soft silk galloon ; or, if hemmed, 
it should be put on wrong side out, that the ridge 
may not hurt the soft flesh. 

If Baby cries and writhes after a hearty meal, 
look at once at the band to see whether or not it 
has become painfully tight with the enlargement of 
the abdomen. 

It is not prudent to leave off the band for six 
months after birth, but judicious nurses no longer 
strap the poor infant up in it so tightly as to im- 
pede respiration, in the belief that such compres- 
sion is necessary to keep the abdomen in shape. 



Outfits. 1 73 

A linen lapel stitched on the lower edge may be 
pinned to the napkin to prevent slipping-up. 

The night-dress should consist of a knitted 
worsted shirt, band, a pinning blanket, and a night- 
gown. Over this last a flannel wrapper should be 
worn in winter, the long sleeves coming down over 
the hands. All the garments should be very loose. 



SHORT CLOTHES. 

As soon as Baby begins to "find his legs," 
shorten his skirts, if the weather is mild, and allow 
him to use them freely. The plunging and sprawl- 
ing that "kicks out" enwrapping flannels and 
cambrics is nature's own method of strengthening 
him for enacting a bipedal part, and precedes 
creeping as legitimately as creeping goes before 
walking. 

His first short dresses should just clear his toes, 
that his trial-steps may not be made dangerous by 
entanglement in his skirts. Put on shoes and long 
stockings, the latter buttoned to an elastic band 
fastened to the waist that supports his skirts. 

The garments should be the same (with the ex- 
ception of drawers, stockings, and shoes) as those 
worn by the child before putting on short skirts. 



1 74 Outfits. 

The drawers must be attached to an under-waist 
and come down a little below the knee. Put on 
easy-fitting shoes buttoned up to the ankles. By all 
means retain the flannel band. 

Silk is cold wear for winter, and, when damp 
with perspiration in summer, clings disagreeably 
to the skin, besides becoming almost as impervious 
as oiled silk to air and moisture, and thus hinder- 
ing the action of the pores. Fine, silk-warp flannel 
is better wear for all seasons, certainly for warm 
weather. Lighten his upper garments, should he 
suffer from heat in summer, and exchange the damp 
for dry flannel. 



MOTHER'S HALF-MINUTES. 



MEDICINE-BOTTLES. 



^V I (if- 



$*& 



fi&jS 



T is not enough that medicine-bottles be 
labelled conspicuously " POISON n when 
they are brought into the dwelling. 
They should never be left where chil- 
dren can reach them from the floor or by climb- 
ing on a chair. If the number of fatal accidents 
that have occurred from carelessness in this re- 
gard were published, the chronicle would bring 
about needed changes as to the location of the 
medicine-chest and the habit of setting a bottle 
down in the most convenient place — to the person 
using it. 



PURE AIR. 

Pure air should be admitted from the top of the 
windows as well as from the bottom, if we would 
have the ventilation of our living-rooms thorough. 



1 76 Mother s Half - Minutes. 

What enters the lungs as oxygen leaves them as 
carbonic acid. The one is Life, the other Death. 
The simple statement proves the need of a constant 
supply of fresh air in chambers where breathing- 
creatures would live. 



baby's bed. 

Babies should sleep on mattresses and be cov- 
ered with light, soft, all-wool blankets instead of 
silk-lined duvets or cotton-wadded comfortables. 
Sheets, blankets, and mattresses should be aired 
when possible, sunned, and well shaken every 
morning. 



WHIMS OF APPETITE. 
It is not well to force a child to eat what he 
honestly loathes. The opposite mistake is to pam- 
per his whims until you can hardly find enough to 
keep him from starvation on a table bountifully 
supplied with proper dishes. 



NAPKINS. 
Napkins which have been taken from the nursery 
wet should not be used again before they are 



Mother s Half-Minutes. 177 

washed. Many skin diseases have their origin in 
neglect of this precaution. The soap should also 
be thoroughly rinsed out of the cloths in the wash- 
ing, otherwise they are almost sure to cause dis- 
tressing chafing. 

Napkins must not be dried in the nursery, if you 
would keep the infant healthy. Nor should soiled 
clothes be kept in the nursery closets, or worse 
still, in a basket under the bed in a sleeping-room. 
Do not tolerate unpleasant smells in the nursery. 
Dirt is seldom, if ever, odorless. Ferret out smells 
as you would vermin. 



ON RAINY DAYS. 

Let it not be forgotten that on rainy days, even 
in summer, babies need to be housed ; also on 
foggy mornings and evenings. If the storm lasts 
all day, it is well to undress the little one in a room 
where there is a fire. The " blaze of two sticks" 
comes in pleasantly here. The child's night-cloth- 
ing and sheets should be hung before it until thor- 
oughly dry. The caution in this respect will often 
avert the danger of summer colds. 



178 Mother s Half-Minutes. 

FRIGHTENING CHILDREN. 

With painful frequency we hear of cruel "prac- 
tical jokes " perpetrated upon little children. 
Again and again comes to us the old story of a 
child frightened into convulsions by a playfellow 
who " only wanted to have a little fun." One 
would think that incidents like this had been en- 
acted and told with ghastly iteration often enough, 
from generation to generation, to warn off the most 
incorrigible fun-lovers and fools from the perilous 
ground. The progress of the witless plot is gen- 
erally the same, up to a certain point. There is 
neither originality nor variety in the favorite mode 
of execution. It sounds trite in the telling. A 
figure wrapped in the conventional sheet, lurking 
in a dark corner ; a spring upon the unsuspecting 
victim, selected because he is the most timorous or 
delicate of the family or school ; dismay, shrieks of 
anguish blent with goblin laughter — then a differ- 
ence in the ending. Sometimes no apparent harm 
is done, unless that one child is made more timid, 
another more cruel. Again, the nervous system 
is unbalanced so far that a swoon, convulsions, 
ensue. Once in a while the innocent subject 
of the practical joke pays for his tormentor's 



Mother s Half-Minutes. 179 

prank with his reason or his life. In a less flag- 
rant manner incalculable mischief is done in many- 
nurseries by tales of ghosts, bogies, the black 
man who comes down the chimney to catch chil- 
dren who will not go to sleep quietly, etc. That 
mother is culpable who, when she finds her child 
unduly timid, does not watch narrowly for in- 
dications that the nervous organism of her off- 
spring has been tampered with, and who, should 
her suspicions be confirmed, does not follow the 
clew to its source and banish the criminal from her 
household. 



AFRAID OF THE NURSE. 

It is a sure sign that something is wrong, and 
very far wrong, when a child shows dread of a nurse 
— refusing to goto her, crying at sight of her, or re- 
maining cross in her care after she ceases to be a 
stranger. Such indications may always be ac- 
cepted as a proof of one of two things : Either 
the woman is unkind to the little one when out of 
the mother's sight, or she is deficient in ability to 
care for and amuse him. In either case she is 
unfit for her office. A child who is habitually un- 
happy cannot grow up strong and healthy. 



i8o Mother s Half- Minutes. 

To delegate the painful duty of chastisement to 
an undisciplined servant is a most unwise proceed- 
ing. The closet imprisonment is fully as bad as 
corporal punishment. Children have lost their wits 
from terror when shut up in a dark room. Your 
nurse is willing to take the risk, but the conse- 
quences really fall upon you and your babies. 



A CHILD WHO CRIES BY THE HOUR WITHOUT 

CAUSE. 

Try moral remedial measures. For example, 
make him comprehend that such and such pleasures 
are contingent upon self-control. Mark crying- 
days with a black cross in his calendar as those on 
which his indulgence in this luxury lost him a 
coveted good. Treat the habit as a disease. Un- 
dress him and put him to bed ; withhold dainties, 
playfellows, and amusements, impressing upon his 
mind that his crying is the cause of the regimen. 
This trick of crying is easily acquired, and the 
habit may become very obstinate. An ingenious 
mother cured her five-year-old of fits so passionate 
as to threaten convulsions by throwing a handful of 
cold water into her face when she began to scream. 
The child, whose infirmity had been pronounced 
incorrigible, would suspend operations with ludic- 



Mother s Half-Mintites. 181 

rous suddenness when her mother moved toward 
the washstand. It may be, as often happens, that 
pre-natal influences have given your little one's dis- 
position a warp in this direction. Still, he should 
be broken of it. You would not hesitate to use 
surgical appliances to straighten a wry foot. 



THE NEWEST BABY. 
It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the 
minds of little children that the advent of the 
latest-born is a common blessing to the household. 
The mother who bemoans herself, in the hearing of 
the elder brother or sister, over the increase of her 
cares, or the father who remarks that this indul- 
gence or that luxury cannot be afforded, now that 
there is another mouth to feed, is sowing thistles 
and tares in fertile soil. The tenth child has as 
good a right to be born as the first, and if he is less 
welcome by reason of straitened means, the last 
persons to suspect this should be his predecessors 
in the nursery. Still more reprehensible is the 
time-(dis)honored figment that his coming can rob 
the others of their share of paternal affection. 
Such talk is worse than foolish. It is as wicked as 
it is false. 



1 82 Mother s Half- Minutes. 

THE VERY FAT BABY. 
It is no sign that a baby is healthy when he is 
very fat and "eats like a pig." "Chunky" chil- 
dren, overladen with adipose tissue, are more apt 
to be quiet than those who are reasonably plump, 
because the whole system is lethargic. Such babies 
should not be fed too often or too heavily, ought to 
be kept in the open air as much as possible, and as 
soon as they can run alone be encouraged to take 
gentle but frequent exercise. 



GREEN IN THE NURSERY. 
Avoid green in choosing ribbons for Baby's 
sashes, caps, and dress-trimmings. The prettiest 
shades of this color are made up with ingredients 
which are distinctly arsenical. Watch him as 
closely as you may, the child is apt to get the end 
of the sash or cap-string in his mouth, in which 
case the stain on lips, tongue, and frock is the least 
hurtful consequence. Babies have been thrown 
into paroxysms of vomiting by chewing green rib- 
bon, and more than one case of skin-poisoning 
has been caused by wearing hats or hoods tied 
under the chin with strings of the same, the perspi- 
ration facilitating absorption of the poisonous dye* 



Mother s Half- Minutes. 183 

In the knowledge of these facts physicians object 
to green wall-papers in nurseries and in sleeping- 
rooms. 



TEETHING-RINGS. 
In choosing rings on which Baby's teeth are to 
be cut, give the preference to rubber above ivory. 
It yields slightly to the pressure of the gums, while 
the friction allays the itching (which is the spe- 
cific use of the ring) without hurting or hardening 
them. Nor will it bruise the flesh should the child 
strike himself in the face or fall upon it. 



SCURF ON THE SCALP. 



If there is scurf to be removed from Baby's scalp 
rub the head gently at night with sweet-oil, saltless 
butter, or, best of all, vaseline. Leave it on until 
morning, then wash as directed in " Baby's Bath." 



THE NURSE S GOWN. 



The gown of the nurse should be made of what is 
called "wash-goods" — *.*., calico or other cotton 
or linen materials, and changed when it is soiled. 



184 Mother s Half- Minutes. 

The large white apron which is now a part of her 
regulation attire sometimes conceals skirt-fronts 
stiff with dirt. Woollen gowns are open to other 
objections besides that they are worn until they are 
threadbare or disgracefully soiled ; evil odors and 
infectious germs cling to them more persistently 
than to lighter fabrics. The big, snowy apron does 
not prevent the transmission of these, although it 
keeps the child's clothes clean. 



SOOTHING SYRUP. 
Soothing-syrups should never be administered 
except in obedience to a medical prescription — and 
not always then, unless you are sure the practitioner 
has given the case proper consideration. 



baby's natural heat. 
The failure to keep up the temperature of new- 
born infants is a frequent cause of death. What 
little natural heat they have must be husbanded 
jealously. Where the vital force is very low hot 
flannels and rubber bags filled with warm water 
help to maintain life until nature can make her 
first "stand." 



Mothers Half- Minutes. 185 

HOLDING BABY. 

Fond mothers and doting aunties ought to resist 
the temptation to hold the baby from hour to hour, 
waking or sleeping. In winter he is warmer, in 
summer cooler, if left to roll on the bed or a folded 
comfortable laid in a shallow box. When he is 
carried in the arms care must be observed not to 
hold him always on the same side. The practice 
of clumsy nurses of saddling one hip — usually the 
right — with the luckless infant is hurtful. The 
mother should see to it that the child is shifted 
from one arm to another, not only to equalize the 
development of the upper part of the body, but to 
prevent a stoppage of circulation in the lower ex- 
tremities. 



STREET-CORNERS. 

Impress on the mind of the nurse, older sister, 
or whatever guardian may take Baby for his airing, 
never to halt for rest or gossip on a street-corner. 
There is a draught there on the hottest day. 
Wheel the perambulator into the shade in summer, 
in cold weather on the sunny lee-side of a wall, be- 
fore stopping. 



1 86 Mothers Half -Minutes. 

TRAVELLING-BASKET. 
Mothers who are travelling or sojourning at hotels 
will do well to add to the furniture of the travelling- 
basket one of the hot-water bottles sold for keep- 
ing infants' food warm and for taking the chill 
from napkins, night-gowns, and other articles of 
clothing. Baskets containing these are offered for 
sale, together with vessels for holding porridge or 
milk, that may be fitted into sockets attached to 
the bottles. Provided with these and the nursery- 
lamp, the mother can make her child comfortable 
in the seven-by-nine closet which is the substitute 
in seaside or mountain resort, for the spacious home 
nursery. 



BABY-POWDER. 
Powder on the general surface — which can be easily 
dried completely with a towel — is not needful, but 
rather objectionable, as clogging the pores while it 
remains there. But many places, folds of skin, etc., 
cannot be, or at least are not, properly dried ; and 
the use of the powder in such places is a less evil 
than leaving moisture, which is likely to irritate 
where the surfaces are opposite, especially in chil- 
dren of irritable skin. Confined perspiration in- 



Mother s Half- Minutes. 187 

creases the moisture, and in this case the powder 
is probably really useful. 

Baby-powder, sold in perfumed packages by 
druggists, is not always to be depended upon. It 
is safer to make it yourself by pounding or rolling 
starch very fine, sifting it through coarse muslin or 
tarletan, then mixing with it a little powdered orris- 
root. The " baby-powder " of commerce is some- 
times adulterated with sulphate of lime, and occa- 
sionally even with more violent poisons. 



" BABY WILL NOT SAY HIS PRAYERS/' 
Within this, the latter half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, a man w r hipped his baby son to death for simi- 
lar disobedience. You know better than to connect 
any religious duty or service in the retentive mem- 
ory of a child with scenes of violence. The serious 
aspect of this question is not that the boy will not 
say his prayers, but that he persistently disobeys 
you. The omission of the formula which will be one 
of the sweetest of early associations to him in years 
to come, means now simply that he has taken a 
whim to resist your will in one particular. The 
first step is to drill him in uniform obedience. Do 
not desecrate solemn words by forcing them into 



1 88 Mothers Half Minutes. 

his mouth. When he has learned to obey you in- 
variably, talk to him, lovingly and patiently, of the 
nature and meaning of what you wish him to say. 
It is absurd to torment your wits for one moment 
with the notion that his stubbornness in this partic- 
ular has any significance beyond what has been 
stated. Such fears are the outcome of superstition, 
not common-sense piety. 



"HE WILL PLAY WITH FIRE." 
A child who persists in meddling with matches, 
stove, or lamp, should be punished with such seem- 
ing harshness that he will not forget the injunction 
" to let the fire alone." The old saying that " a 
burnt child dreads the fire " holds good with re- 
spect to other trespasses. Then matches ought to 
be kept absolutely beyond his reach, and, where 
the circumstances admit of constant watchfulness, 
he ought never to be left alone in a room where he 
can have access to a stove or a gas-flame. A poor 
seamstress who was obliged to leave her children 
alone in her room several days of each week cured 
each in turn of all disposition to play with fire by 
holding one of the little fingers on the stove until 
the burn was unbearable. The remedy was a cruel 



Mother s Half- Minutes. 189 

necessity from her point of view. Disobedience, 
wilful and obstinate, should be met promptly and 
justly. Contrive to make the dread of the certain 
consequence of his transgression of your law out- 
weigh the fascination of the bright flames, present 
severity in the circumstances is true kindness. 



WHEN TO BEGIN WITH FARINACEOUS FOOD. 

It cannot be too often repeated that no farinace- 
ous food should be added to the child's natural 
aliment (mother's milk, or equal parts of unskimmed 
milk and boiling water, slightly sweetened), before 
the salivary glands begin to act. Until the teeth 
"start" in the gums, Baby's mouth is dry. The 
mother should accept this as a sign that no liberties 
are to be taken with his digestion. 



ROMPING WITH BABY. 
Serious consequences sometimes ensue upon the 
romp which the child enjoys even more than does 
the father, older brother, or friend of the family, 
who swings the little one back and forth at the full 
length of its arms, or tosses it over his head while 
grasping it by the hands, varying the entertainment 



190 Mother s Half- Minutes. 

by catching it by the ankles and suspending it for 
an instant head downward. It is a received idea 
with some fathers that boys cannot be trained too 
early in gymnastic exercises, the rougher the better, 
so long as the child does not complain of being 
hurt. Spirited boys of two years have been known 
to endure, without flinching, this sort of " training " 
until the limbs were twisted out of joint. 



PLENTY OF LIGHT AND AIR. 
Give Baby plenty of light and sun-warmed air. 
He will bloom and flourish in it as do roses and 
peaches. It is worse than putting a candle under a 
bushel to shut him up in the gloomy rooms affected 
by his elders in summer weather. The shade of 
growing boughs is more wholesome for him than 
that of bowed shutters. 



LIFT THE CARRIAGE OVER ROUGH PLACES. 
Lift a baby's carriage gently over curb-stones 
at street-crossings, and on country roads choose 
smooth ways. The nurse who drags the vehicle 
containing a miserable infant down the steps of 
porch or area is so inhuman or so ignorant that she 



Mother s Half- Minutes. 191 

merits instant dismissal. Serious disorders of brain 
or spine may result from the act. 



PAINTED TOYS. 

Painted toys, whether of rubber or wood, should 
not be given to a child until he has learned that 
everything he handles need not go into his mouth. 
Candies are poisonous for a baby, even if not col- 
ored. 



"TREATING BABY." 

The habit of treating Baby to a lump of sugar, 
or a teaspoonful of pure granulated sugar from the 
bowl on the coffee-tray when he is brought to the 
table, may not be injurious, but it is useless, and 
creates one more want to be gratified. The sim- 
pler his tastes the happier he will be. 



BUMPS AND BRUISES. 



Treat a bump on the head or a bruise on any 
part of the body with warm water, as hot as can 
be borne with comfort, and not, as used to be the 
custom, with cold. Hold a sponge to the bump on 



192 Mother s Half- Minutes. 

the forehead, squeezed slightly, that the dripping 
may not irritate the patient, and, as it cools, dip it 
again in the warm water. 



FORCING THE MIND. 
A healthy child's mind should lie fallow, so far 
as alphabet and books are concerned, until five 
years old. Delicate and nervous children may be 
thus neglected until the age of six or seven years, 
without danger of duncehood. 



NURSERY VENTILATION. 

The simplest, cheapest, and most effectual disin- 
fectant known to science is fresh, living air. Admit 
it freely to all parts of the house, especially to the 
nursery. If the room has a close or sour smell, 
send Baby into another chamber and ventilate his 
premises thoroughly. 



BASSINETTE-PERAMBULATOR. 

For children under six months of age what is 
known as the " bassinette-perambulator " — i.e., one 
in which the baby can lie comfortably at full length 



Mother s Half- Minutes. 193 

instead of being strapped into a sitting posture — is 
safest and best. Babies, being dumb, suffer un- 
known torments in being kept out for hours with 
no adequate support for the weak, curving spine, 
nurses complaining, on returning the exhausted 
creatures to the mothers' arms, that they are "un- 
accountably cross and wearisome to-day/' 



ALCOHOL HURTFUL. 
Alcohol in every form and combination ought to 
be stricken from the list of the nursing-mother's or 
wet-nurse's " must-haves." If it do not beget in 
the child a fondness for stimulants which will lead 
to trouble in after-life, the immediate effects of the 
potion are too apt to be apparent in drowsiness or 
nervous excitement, testifying to disturbance in the 
healthful balance of the system. Like results, in 
a milder degree, follow the intemperate use of 
tea and coffee. Strength, in these circumstances, 
should be kept up by nourishment, not by " brac- 
ing " beverages. 



THE SUMMER DAY-NAP. 
In warm weather contrive that Baby's long day- 
nap be taken in the hottest hours of the day, and, 



194 Mother s Half- Minutes. 

when convenient, on a bed instead of a crib, that 
the fresh air may pass freely to the sleeper. Cra- 
dles or cribs with solid sides are hot and unwhole- 
some. 



SEA-WATER BATH. 

In using sea-water for Baby's bath have it brought 
up in pails to the nursery, poured into the bath-tub, 
and set in the sun, or left to stand all night, to take 
off the chill before the child is plunged into it. 
There is absolute cruelty in the submersion of the 
tender body in the surf, even when adults pro- 
nounce the water " delightful." 



RAW MILK. 

Raw, rich milk, unmixed with water, may fatten 
a baby rapidly for a short time, but is almost sure 
to produce biliary derangement or cutaneous erup- 
tion after a while. The " casein " of cow's milk is 
largely in excess of the proportion of the same in 
mother's milk, and less soluble. Even when diluted 
with hot water, it is sometimes necessary to add an 
alkali (lime-water, for example) to promote the 
solution of the casein. 



Mother s Half- Minutes* 195 

CARE OF BABY'S FIRST TEETH. 

Begin to keep Baby's teeth clean from the time 
they appear, and never remit the care of them for 
a day. A healthy child should not suffer from the 
aching of his deciduous teeth. The decomposition 
of food left between them causes decay. There is 
a neat little implement called a tooth-syringe, which 
keeps clean the spaces on the inside as well as the 
outside of the teeth. There is no reason why the 
first set should not be perfectly sound when they 
are shed. 



FLATTERING BABY. 

While it is undoubtedly true that every mother's 
baby is the prettiest and brightest in the world, the 
adoring parent should repress praise of his personal 
gifts in his hearing. At an amazingly tender age 
he enters into the full meaning of these, and she 
finds herself the proprietor of a vain little monkey 
whose posturings and airs make her ashamed of 
him, if not of his mamma. 



A HINT FOR CHRISTMAS. 




NTIL the youngest girl-baby is called 
" Miss" by grown-up acquaintances, and 
the baby-boy discards knickerbockers 
for long trousers, the Christmas-tree 
should annually take root, bloom, and bear fruit, 
like the Levite's rod, in one short night. Our 
German friends, of whatever age and station, set it 
up year by year, the visible sign of concord and 
home-loves, hung as thick with memories of the 
" Vaterland " as is the shamrock for the Irish exile. 
The conventional tree, bought in the market- 
place, is ready mounted on a wooden block or 
board, strung with gilt balls, crescents, and stars 
of varying speciousness, and a dozen wax-candles 
stuck stiffly on the ends of the boughs. Baby, 
bedizened in his finest robe, because it is Christmas, 
blinks sleepily, then excitedly, at sight of it all 
ablaze, and forgets the gifts heaped upon him in 



198 A Hint for Christmas. 

hankering for glitter he may not touch. By next 
day the forbidden shrub has vanished. "The sight 
of it only makes him cross." 

May I suggest a better way of marking the fes- 
tival which is pre-eminently " children's day" ? 

The first-remembered Christmas-tree should be 
almost as much to the child as his first vote signi- 
fies to the man. Gently prepare the soil of the 
two-year-old's mind for the occasion by simple talk 
of Santa Claus and stocking-hanging. To this end 
let the incomparable nursery-lyric, "The Night 
Before Christmas," by daily repetition, bring 
nearer and nearer " the prancing and pawing of 
each little hoof" and the wizard-driver to the child- 
ish imagination. On Christmas-eve, when tiny 
socks and longer-legged stockinglets hang — an al- 
ways pathetic row — about the parlor mantel, make 
solemn recital in concert of the wonderful tale. If 
there is a " summer-front " take it out for that 
night ; if a grate, promise that the fire shall go 
down in good season for the "jolly old elf's " 
descent. Babies being dismissed to dancing visions 
of sugar-plums, bring the tree from its hiding-place. 
It should be from four to six feet high, freshly cut. 
If you can get holly, content yourself with nothing 
else. It is strong and bright, and holds its leaves 



A Hint for Christmas. 199 

in a furnace-warmed house longer than any other 
evergreen. The next best thing is Norway spruce 
or fir, and, among native trees, the hemlock. A 
large flower-pot is the most convenient and comely 
pedestal. Hold the tree upright, the lower end 
fast in the round hole in the bottom of the pot, 
while an assistant wedges a few stones about the 
trunk, then fills the vessel with dry sand or earth. 
Cover the surface with moss, real or artificial. The 
stem should be straight, the limbs " stocky," and 
not too close together. Establish it in the middle 
of the parlor floor. 

Decorate it with red, pink, white, yellow — never 
blue or green — streamers. Ribbon is prettiest, of 
course, but neatly-cut pennons of cambric, six, 
eight, or ten inches long, less than an inch wide, 
and deeply forked at the end, make a fair substi- 
tute. Stitch each to a leaf or twig ; have plenty 
of them, and manage the colors tastefully. Hang 
bountiful store of " lady-apples " by black sewing- 
silk tied to the stems ; intersperse these with such 
light presents as can be suspended among the 
boughs, tip each twig with a small United States 
flag, and on the top place an angel, keeping watch 
over all. Larger gifts may be arranged about the 
root of the tree and around the pot. Marbles, 



200 Hint for Christmas. 

white grapes, lady-apples, an orange, and such un- 
colored confectionery as you allow the children to 
taste now and then, with a worsted or rubber ball 
on top, will fill the stocking. For the smallest 
member provide linen picture-books, building- 
blocks, one of the new old-fashioned rag-babies, to 
be had at any toy-store, a rubber dog, cat, or doll, 
soft balls to roll and toss. The list of toys with 
which he can play without hindering you or hurting 
himself is long and tempting. 

Let the exhibition be deferred until the little 
ones have been calmed and refreshed by sleep, 
bath and breakfast. The orderly progress of the 
meal over, papa and baby may lead the procession 
into the mysterious precincts. Admit the sunlight 
freely upon the home-decked tree, and the absence 
of candles will not be lamented. They are usually 
a nuisance from their habit of toppling as they 
burn, setting fire to streamers or other light sub- 
stances, and shedding scalding spermaceti tears 
over clothing and carpet. Serve the " fruit " 
hanging from the limbs and strewed around the 
tree to one person at a time, beginning with the 
youngest. Settle baby in a corner cleared for his 
accommodation, where nobody will tread on his 
fingers or trip over his feet, and set his acquisitions 



A Hint for Christmas. 201 

in array for his delectation. If these have been 
judiciously selected he will need no tending or 
amusing while the rest examine their treasures. 
If you have, instead, seen fit to endow him with 
costly automatic machines that require to be wound 
up every five minutes, and then run away from 
him ; with dolls that must not be kissed ; with 
cows that bellow to have milk poured into a spinal 
trap-door ; jacks-in-the-box that will not down at 
his pushing ; birds that fly, and fish that swim in 
real water, you may as well complete the business 
of spoiling him by appointing an attendant, whose 
slavish devotion may purchase comparative comfort 
for the rest of the family. Expensive toys for a 
child are always a mistake ; for babies they are a 
cruel blunder. 

Never let the beautiful rod that has budded at 
mid-winter become the instrument of punishment 
to the froward or the public reward of exemplary 
behavior. Beneath its shadow let equal rights 
abide. It is not within the possibilities of baby- 
nature to deserve such anguish as an empty stock- 
ing can bring to the tender little soul. Santa Claus 
must not degenerate into a captious eavesdropper, 
who haunts nursery keyholes for a month before 
Christmas to make up his lists of good and bad 
9* 



202 



A Hint for Christmas. 



children. Like the Providence he typifies, he 
brings gifts, not because his beneficiaries are 
worthy, but because every pulse of his big, gener- 
ous heart is love. 



INDEX 



Introduction . 



FAMILIAR TALKS WITH 
MOTHERS. 

Baby abroad in winter 57 

" at home in winter. ... 47 

Baby's bath 13 

" day-nap 28 

" nurse 36 

Mrs. Gamp in the nursery . . 3 

Photographing the baby. ... 75 

The precocious baby 65 

The baby that must go to 

the country 82 

The baby that must stay in 

town 90 

Sabbath twilight talk with 

mamma 99 

When, where, and how baby 

should sleep 21 

NURSERY COOKERY. 



PACK 

Apple-sauce 157 

Arrow root 130 

" blanc-mange. . . . 133 

" jelly 132 

" milk porridge . . . 132 

Artificial foods 118 

Barley milk 147 

1 * water 144 

Beef 168 

" tea 146 

Berries 164 

Brewis, Graham 1^4 

Brown pudding 153 

Custard pudding 158 

Fruits 159 

Goat's milk 148 

Grapes 165 

Hominy and milk 12.8 

" How do you feed him ? ". in 



Apples 161 Jelly, arrow root 132 

' ' baked 162 * * rice 144 

" sweet, steamed 162 " sago 144 



204 



Index. 



PAGE 

Lime-water in milk. , . 149 

Meats 166 

Menu for bigger babies. ... 155 

Milk peptonized 148 

" toast 140 

" to keep sweet 141 

Mush and milk 138 

Mutton and lamb 168 

Nursery desserts 151 

Panada 139 

Peaches . . . . 163 

Pears 164 

Poached eggs on toast 156 

Preparations for delicate 

children 143 

Pork 169 

Potatoes, baked 156 

Poultry 169 

When to feed him 124 

THE PORRIDGE 

FAMILY 134 

Arrow root porridge, 132 

Corn starch " 135 

Dried flour " 145 

Farina " 121 

Frothed " 137 

Ground rice " 136 

Indian meal " 136 

Oatmeal " 127 

Rice flour " 135 

PUDDINGS. 

Brown pudding 153 

Custard " 157 



PAGE 

Rice pudding. . 152 

Sago " 151 

Soup rice 154 

Toast water T45 

Veal 168 

Wheaten grits 137 

CLOTHING 171 

Baby's first clothes 171 

Short clothes 173 

MOTHERS' HALF 

MINUTES 176 

A crying child 180 

Afraid of the nurse .. . 179 

Alcohol hurtful 193 

Baby's bed 176 

" natural heat 184 

11 powder 186 

"Baby will not say his 

prayers " 187 

Bassinette — perambulator . . 192 

Bumps and bruises 191 

Care of baby's first teeth.., 195 

Flattering baby , . 195 

Forcing the mind 192 

Frightening children 178 

Green in the nursery 182 

" He will play with fire ". . . 188 

Hint for Christmas. ... . 197 

Holding baby 185 

Lift baby's carriage 190 

Medicine bottles 175 

Napkins 176 

Nurse's gown 183 



Index. 



205 



PAGE 

Nursery ventilation 192 

On rainy days 177 

Painted toys 191 

Plenty of light and air 190 

Pure air 175 

Raw milk 194 

Romping with baby. ....... 189 

Sea-water bath 194 

Scurf on scalp 183 

Soothing syrup 184 



PAGE 

Street corners . . . , 185 

Summer day-nap 193 

Teething-rings 183 

The newest baby 181 

The very fat baby 182 

Travelling basket 186 

" Treating baby " 191 

When to give farinaceous 

food 189 

Whims of appetite 176 



44 The very best, the most sensible, the most practical, the most honest 
book on this matter of getting up good dinners, and living in a decent, 
Christian way, that has yet found its way in our household."— Watchman 
a.nd Reflector. 

COMMON SENSE 

IN THE HOUSEHOLD. 
A MANUAL OF PRACTICAL HOUSEWIFERY. 

By MARION HARLAND. 



New Edition. One volume, 12mo, cloth, . . Price, $1.75 
Kitchen Edition, in Oil-Cloth Covers, at same price. 



This edition is printed fro??i new electrotype plates and bound in 
a new pattern cloth binding, and also in the favorite i " Kitchen 
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The popularity of this book has increased steadily for ths last ten years, 
and the sale has reached the extraordinary number of 

Over 100,000 Copies. 

Many housekeepers will gladly welcome their old friend in a new dress, 
and renew their copies worn by constant use ; or, as the author herself 
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panion in fresh dress, yet more serviceable than before, and that their 
daughters may, at the close of a second decade, demand new stereot\pe 
plates for still another and like this a progressive edition." 

With the new edition of " Common Sense/' the Publishers will issue* 
in uniform style : 

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One volume, i2mo, 720 pp., cloth, or " Kitchen Edition," without 
colored plates $i-75- 



BREAKFAST, LUNCHEON, AND TEA. 

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743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 



A. NEW EDITION 

Uniform with the re-issue of "Common Sense in the Household* 



THE DINNER YEAR-BOOK. 

By MARION HARLAND, 

Author of "Common Sense in the Household," "Breakfast, 
Luncheon, and Tea," etc., etc. 



One vol., 12mo, 720 pages, Price, $1.75 

Kitchen Edition in Oil-Cloth Covers at same Price. 



Ti*e Dinner Year-Book is. in its name, happily descriptive of its purposes an 1 char- 
acter. It o cupies a place which, amid all the publications upon cookery — and their 
name is Legion— has never yet been occupied. 

The author truly says that there have been dinner-giving books published, that is 
books of menus for company dinings, ■•*" Little Dinners," for especial occasions, etc.. et . ; 
but that she has never yet met with a practical directory of this important meal 
for every day in the year. In this volume she has furnished the programme 
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the proper manner of serving it at the table. The book has been prepared for 
the family, for the home of ordinary means, and it has hit the 
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The purchaser will find that he has bought what the name purports — 7 he Dinner 
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This book, however, is not valuable merely as a directory for dinners appropriate to 
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American public. The material for this work has been collected with great care, 
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A NEW BOOK BY MAEION HARLAND. 

Mortals in Plea sant Paths. 

One volume, 12mo, ----- $1.75 



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the prose and poetical works of Dr. Holland will prove an ever new, ever welcome 
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the Ameri an people, a7id has thus won his way to the companionship of many 
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i2mo, ......... 1.50 

Complete Sets (in box), . . . . . . 7.25 

jf. G. Holland. 

SEVENOAKS. Small i2mo, 
The Bay Path. Small i2mo, 
Arthur Bonnicastle. Small i2mo, 
Miss Gilbert's Career. Small 121110, 
Nicholas Mixturx. Small i2mo, 

Fra?zces Hodgson Burnett. 

That Lass cV Lowrie's. Illustrated. i2mo. Paper, 

50c; cloth, 1.50 

Haworth's. Illustrated. i2mo, ... 1.50 

Louisiana. 1 21110, 1.00 

Surly Tim and Other Stories. Small i2mo, . . 1.25 

Earlier Stories. 

Lindsay's Luck. i6mo. Paper, 30 

Pretty Polly Pembf.rtox. i6mo. Paper, ... 1 .40 

Kathleen. i6mo. Paper, 40 

Theo. i6mo. Paper 30 

Miss Crespigny. i6mo. Paper, . . . . , *. .30 



I.25 
3.25 
I.25 

1.25 
1.25 



Scrib *ners List of Books of Fiction. 



Frank R. Stockton. 

Rudder Grange. i2mo. Paper, 60 cents ; cloth, $1.25 
The Lady or the Tiger? and Other Stories. i2mo. 
Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 1.00 



George P. Lathrop. 



Newport. i2mo. Paper, 50c; cloth, . . . 1.25 

An Echo of Passion. i2mo. Paper, 50c; cloth, 1.00 

In the Distance. i2mo. Paper, 50c; cloth, . 1.00 

Saxe Holn^s Stories, 

First Series. 

" Draxy Miller's Dowry," " The Elder's Wife," " Whose 
Wife Was She ? " " The One-Legged Dancers," " How 
One Woman Kept Her Husband," " Esther Wynn's 
Love Letters." i2ino. Paper, 50c; cloth, . . 1.00 

Second Series. 

(i A Four-Leaved Clover, 1 ' " Farmer Bassett's Romance," 
" My Tourmaline," " Joe Hale's Red Stocking," " Su- 
san Lawton's Escape." i2mo. Paper, 50c; cloth, 1.00 



H. H. Boyesen. 



Falconberg. Illustrated. i2mo, .... 1.50 

Gunnar. A Tale of Norse Life. Square i2mo, . 1.25 

Tales from Two Hemispheres. Square i2mo, . 1.00 

Ilka on the Hill Top, and Other Stories. Square i2mo, 1.00 
Queen Titania. Square i2mo, . . . . 1.00 



Edward Everett Hale. 
Philip Nolan's Friends. Illustrated. i2mo, 

Augustus M. Swift. 
Cupid, M.D. A Story. i6mo, 



1-75 



1. 00 



Scri£a t ei?s List of Books of Fiction. 



Howard Pyle. 

Within the Capes. One vol. i2mo, . . ?i.oo 

E. T. W. Hoffmann. 
Weird Tales. 2 vols. i2mo. With portrait, 3.0a 

Erckma7in- Chatrian Series. 

Friend Fritz. i6mo, 1.25 

The Conscript. Illustrated. i6mo, , . 1.25 

Waterloo. Illustrated. i2mo, .... 1.25 

Madame Therese. Illustrated. i6mo, . . . 1.25 

The Blockade of Phalsburg. Illustrated. i6mo, 1.25 

The Invasion of France in 1814. Illustrated. 161110, 1.25 

A Miller's Story of the War. i6mo, . . 1.25 

Jules Verne. 

Godfrey Morgan. Illustrated. 8vo, .... 2.00 

Michael Strogoff. Illustrated. New edition. 8vo, . 2.00 
A Floating City, and The Blockade Runners. 
Illustrated. 8vo, ........ 2.00 

Hector Servadac. Illustrated. 8vo, .... 2.00 

Dick Sands. Illustrated. 8vo, 3.00 

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Illustra- 
ted. 8vo, 3.00 

The Mysterious Island. Illustrated. 8vo, . . 3.00 

From the Earth to the Moon Direct in Ninety- 
Seven Hours, Twenty Minutes. Illustrated. 121110, 1.50 
Stories of Adventure. Comprising " Meridiana," and 

"A Journey to the Centre of the Earth." Illus. nmo, 1.50 
The Demon of Cawnpore. (Part I of the Steam 

House). Illustrated. i2mo, 1-5° 

Tigers and Traitors. (Part II of the Steam House). 

Illustrated. i2mo, . 1-5° 

Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon. (Part I 

of the Giant Raft). Illustrated. i2mo. . . 1.50 
The Cryptogram. (Part II of the Giant Raft). Illus- 
trated. 1 21110, 1.50 



Scribner's List of Books of Fiction. 

The King' s Men. 

A Tale of To-morrow. By Robert Grant, John Boyle 
O'Reilly, J. S. of Dale, and John T. Wheelwright. i2mo, $1.25 

Virginia W. Johnson. 
The Fainalls of Tipton. i2mo, . . . 1.25 

Mrs. E. Prentiss. 

Fred, Maria, and Me. With illustrations. i2mo. New 
edition, 1.00 

J. S. of Dale. 

Guerndale. An Old Story. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; 
cloth, 1.25 

The Crime of Henry Vane. By the author of " Guern- 
dale." i2mo, . . . 1. 00 

Mary Adams. 
An Honorable Surrender. i6mo, . . . 1.00 

Count Leo Tolstoy. 
The Cossacks. i2mo, 1.25 

Donald G. Mitchell. 

Dr, Johns. i2mo. New edition ,. . . . 1.25 

Julia Schayer. 

Tiger Lily and Other Stories. 121110, . , » 1.00 

Mary Mapes Dodge. 
Theophilus and Others. i2mo, . . . 2.50 

A. Perry. 
The Schoolmaster's Trial. 121110, . . . 1.00 

H. C. Bttnner and Brander Matthews. 

In Partnership. Studies in Story-Telling. i2mo, 1.00 

Across the Chasm. 

One vol. i2mo, ....... 100 





•T 



